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MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 











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MAGIC 

AND 

MARY ROSE 

BY 

FAITH BALDWIN .QjjcWAA* 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 







Copyright, 1924 

By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(Incorporated) 



Printed in the United Statea of America 


THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 


OCT JO 1924 J 

Cl A 807451 





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TO LAURA AND IRA 








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MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


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MAGIC 

AND MARY ROSE 

CHAPTER I 

A great many people labor under the delusion that 
all of Long Island, something like unto Gaul itself, 
is divisible into three parts, the same being; one, 
summer hotels; two, millionaire mansions, and three, 
indistinguishable, small shacks belonging to equally 
indistinguishable natives and completely surrounded 
by scrub oak. And there are yet other hordes of the 
unenlightened who firmly believe that the greater 
part of that long green tongue thrusting itself so gal¬ 
lantly into the sea is composed of little brick stations 
and stucco cottages with built-in breakfast nooks—so 
much down and the rest like rent—and all within fif¬ 
teen minutes of Grand Central Station. To these 
benighted souls all of Long Island is the backyard 
of New York, the dwelling place of hurried com¬ 
muters with packages and newspapers who exist only 
for the 8.10 in the morning and the 5.32 in the 
afternoon. 

Now there is much truth in all these assertions as 
3 


4 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Long Island, like a beautiful and beloved woman, is 
apt to be all things to all people. But she has an¬ 
other side and one somewhat overlooked from the 
train window on one’s way to Flushing or even to 
Southampton. Between the various towns and ham¬ 
lets she boasts numberless lovely and prosperous 
farm lands presided over by dignified old houses, 
houses that have often stood there since the great 
battles raged over the debatable and charming 
ground. These are the homesteads of natives, to be 
sure, but not the native whose shack we observe with 
aloofness from the grimy window of the parlor car: 
the dwelling places of “natives” neither Balkan or 
Mediterranean as many of the home-seekers now are, 
but of, and by, and for Long Island, having per¬ 
haps migrated there from nearby Connecticut, from 
Massachusetts and other green spots on the globe. 
These be prosperous and goodly people and with 
them we have to deal, for of them was Mary Rose. 

Somewhere not far from Riverhead and Matti- 
tuck, sloping to the highway and then back to the 
sparkling Sound an ancestor of Mary Rose Rogers 
had made his home. He had started out with the 
very modest purchase of several hundred acres, 
acres which under the hands of his descendants 
had increased rather than diminished. The house 
too had increased—it was builded sturdily in the 
lean-to fashion and the years had added to it—an 
old red house, with five solid chimneys sending their 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


S 


grey smoke to the leaning heavens; a house made to 
live in, a house made for love and the laughter of 
children and the sound of happy voices—in this 
house Mary Rose was born to David and Ella 
Rogers, in this house she had grown to childhood, 
adolescence and the questing happiness of young 
womanhood. And in this house, she vowed with a 
little flourish of her trumpets, she would live and 
die. 

There were no sisters or brothers. Mary Rose 
was the youngest of four, none of whom she had 
ever known, as an epidemic had taken them away 
before she had had time to come and join them. But 
Mary Rose, born when her mother was nearing 
forty and when the old house had seemed sorry- 
silent for several years, was destined to survive 
—heat, cold, childish diseases and the natural 
consequences of her own adventurous nature. She 
had fallen out of every tree on “The Place,as 
Five Chimneys Farm was affectionately known, she 
had fallen into her own particular bit of the Sound 
half a hundred times before she was eight years old, 
and had proved the truth of mind over matter in 
the question of green apples on a little stomach, and 
at the age of three had been discovered, after a 
frantic search, curled up in the stall of the most 
unruly of the young farm horses, sound asleep, an 
apple in her chubby small fist. The apple had been 
meant as a bribe to “Whitecap” whom Mary Rose 


6 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


longed to mount. But she had fallen a prey to 
drowsiness before the bait could be offered, and 
slept there, serene as the autumn sky above the 
barns, between the hoofs of the great and, in this 
instance, patient beast. 

Mary Rose had from babyhood two outstanding 
characteristics. She was fearless and she was 
friendly. 

The post office for The Place was Wellport, a small 
green hamlet on the water possessing one of the 
lesser inevitable summer hotels and a handful of 
inhabitants all the year round, say five or six hun¬ 
dred. The Place lay perhaps three miles distant, 
not quite within the village limits although Well- 
port claimed it and the Rogers for her own. David 
Rogers had a finger in a great many pies. He was 
“in the bank,” so to speak, in Riverhead; he had a 
wee office in Wellport with “Insurance—All Kinds 
and Real Estate” on the window in gilt letters; he 
was on the hospital boards here, there and the other 
place, and he was a farmer, a real farmer, raising 
the pleasant Long Island potato, the succulent straw¬ 
berry and other delicacies, including the most mar¬ 
velous asparagus, for the city markets and several 
of the big hotels. Perhaps he did not make a great 
deal of money from his farming these past years. 
Competition was strong, labor, and poor labor at 
that, was high and things “cost” as Mary Rose 
was apt to remark-modern appliances, fertilizer 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


7 


and all the rest of it. But he loved his farm and 
ran it, perhaps, with more of the creative joy of 
the artist in agriculture than for profit. For his 
lines had fallen in pleasant places and several gen¬ 
erations of hard-working Rogerses had added to the 
original stake of the first pioneer. 

In common parlance David Rogers was “almighty 
well-fixed” and therefore Mary Rose must assume 
the gratifying position of heiress—heiress to broad 
acres, to a sweep of wonderful sky and of as won¬ 
derful water, heiress to farm land and pasture land, 
to green growing things and to chicken yards stocked 
with Rhode Island Reds and Indian game cocks and 
White Wyandottes, to horses and cows, to eight 
dogs, one Ford, many farm wagons, a perfect house 
and a Nonsense Cat. 

To see Mary Rose one must first see Five Chim¬ 
neys, built on the noble rise of a hill. Its red 
frame, which had toned to a certain charming rose 
color, was covered in season with clematis and ram¬ 
bler that swarmed up the roof on eager green feet 
and twined about the chimneys. It was a house 
with which to fall in love, close to the ground, as 
rambling as long thought on an idle summer’s day 
and divisible into many rooms of all shapes and 
sizes. A broad veranda surrounded it and looked 
down benevolently at the Sound beyond its feet. 

Mary Rose had many favorite places in and about 
the house. One was the kitchen, a dream of white 


8 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


walls, with a smoke-blackened fireplace where hung 
an ancient black crane. Blue china, chintz and 
the gleaming of the brass, copper and more modern 
utensils in the sunlight, which came through many 
windows, made the kitchen the most cheerful place 
imaginable. There was a great range which could 
accommodate a course dinner for a large family 
of hungry giants, and a small screened kitchen porch 
where Mary Rose was wont to sit, very docilely, 
and shell peas, for the sheer delight of looking across 
the fields to the drop of small sand cliffs that led 
to the white beach and to the changing colors and 
the steadfast clarity of the Sound. And adjacent 
was a wonderful old grape arbor which was dis¬ 
tressful to David Rogers, who cited it as a breeding 
place for mosquitoes, but which was forever sacred 
from the devastating axe because of its great age 
and its beauty, a beauty that varied with the seasons; 
feathered translucent tendrils in spring, a heavenly 
haven of cool green shadows in summer, and in fall, 
the twisted tree of loveliness itself from which hung 
the heavy purple globes, filled with winy sweet¬ 
ness and the color of a king’s robe. Even in winter 
Mary Rose loved that grapevine. It had so thick 
and sturdy a look and its gnarled arms were so 
aspiring. 

As for the unused well just by the kitchen door, 
which Mr. Rogers often threatened to “make away 
with,” Mary Rose declared she would that defend 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


9 


to her death. It had a small green structure of 
pointed roof over its great stones, a roof like the 
magnified cap of an elf, and it was covered with 
vines which slowly dropped their leaves into the 
quiet, deep brown waters below. 

Kitchen and arbor and well—and the Sound be¬ 
yond the porch. And within the house, Mary Rose’s 
own bedroom. This she had herself in part “deco¬ 
rated” out of her Christmas money and her blood 
money—as she called her school teacher’s salary. 
It was an octagonal room, with latticed windows 
and a tree just outside that peered in curiously and 
waved its branches at her in greeting night and 
morning. The walls were buff; a smoothly shining 
four poster stood there sedately, with a great canopy 
of ruffled, ball-fringed dimity and a snowy valance 
of the same. The window hangings and cushions 
of several deep chairs were blue and saffron and 
there were braided rugs on the polished floor. The 
room had neither luxury nor austerity; it was simply 
a cheerful and restful place and the little white 
shelves that the men had carpentered for Mary 
Rose were packed and brimming over with books. 
On dark afternoons after school was out, in the fall 
of the year, Mary Rose fled to that room as to a 
retreat—to lie prone on the snowy counterpane 
of the bed—to her mother’s horror—and listen 
to the wind, half sharp, half sweet, and to set her 
teeth into that most stimulating of fine fruit, a 


10 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE: 


golden russet apple, fragrant and lovely to the senses 
of touch and smell and taste. Life, fancied Mary 
Rose, holds no pleasure as simple and charming as 
that of apples to munch, books to read and cushions 
heaped, a soft bed to lie on when the days begin to 
shorten and the sun goes down to death in a blaze 
of glory and defiance. If apples came to full fruit 
in the springtime, said Mary Rose to herself, one 
would never get the same amount of pleasure out 
of them. 

There never was a woman’s bedroom without a 
mirror—surely the cave woman had a bit of glass 
or something tucked away or harbored a pool of 
clear water in the rocks near her bed of skins! 
Mary Rose had several mirrors old and new. And 
as she looked into them as frequently as any young 
thing of two and twenty is likely to, it should not 
be hard to surprise her at this innocent pastime and 
see for ourselves what the mirror has to report. 

Mary Rose Rogers was of medium height—just 
the right height, most people thought her—and of 
the proper weight. Once in her life she had run 
to puppy fat, but that was now a thing of the past 
and she was curved where curves should be and 
was straight where no curves should reign. As for 
her face, most people on seeing Mary Rose for the 
first time would exclaim, in bewilderment and in 
delight, “But—what a perfectly amusing little face!” 
And in the next breath they would add, “And how 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


11 


very pretty!” But somehow the prettiness didn’t 
matter as much, there are so many pretty faces in 
this world and so few faces that amuse and gladden 
and warm the heart all at one and the same time. 

I think her face deserves a whole new paragraph. 
In the first place it was a face as friendly as that of 
a puppy, if you can imagine such a thing, and as 
sturdy as a face can well be. There was perpetual 
tan in the round cheeks and the brown eyes were 
like laughter itself, just tilted a little at the cor¬ 
ners, toward the sweep of brows as delicate as the 
wings of a bird, as questing and as adventurous. 
Amusing eyes which disappeared into a little cres¬ 
cent of comedy when Mary Rose laughed—which 
was very often. Her nose was small and intended to 
be straight, but at the last moment some giddy 
angel had given it the merest flip with a tender 
finger, so it was an amusing nose too. Her chin 
was very square and in the exact middle of it there 
was a cleft as if, also at the last minute, the same 
angel had stuck her thumb into the pliant clay and 
remarked, “There, that finishes you!” A daring 
cleft, a cleft like the kiss from laughter’s own lips 
and a cleft which somehow filled the onlooker with 
a strange surprise. It was as unexpected as the half 
dimple near the corner of Mary Rose’s left eye—- 
a dimple that was like a dimple and was merely a 
scar—the relic of a too inquiring expedition near a 
lively combination of wood pile and buzz saw. 


12 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Dear me, I’ve forgotten her mouth! 

It was a scarlet mouth, satin-skinned and gener¬ 
ous—none of your little Cupid bows or your tight- 
lipped, pursed-up members, a wide mouth, with 
laughter in the deep, tilted corners and a quirk 
to it at all hours of the day and in every mood. 
E’en when Mary Rose was a little sorrowful her 
mouth used to laugh a bit contrariwise. It was 
physically impossible for it to droop and it seemed 
always ready to speak high-spirited, happy, gallant 
sentences. 

For the rest, the sort of dark hair that has red 
lights in it, very passable, active feet and short, 
square hands that looked awfully practical and of- 
the-earth-earthy till one saw the incongruous growth 
of long tapering fingers. 

This was Mary Rose at two and twenty, a happy 
person. 

She taught school because she “must do some¬ 
thing” and that seemed the most likely. There was 
a grammar school at Wellport and over that she 
reigned. Her class was about the youngest, to be 
sure, and there were other teachers; nevertheless it 
was Mary Rose’s school and she had prepared for 
the arduous duties of teaching the young Long 
Island idea to shoot as normally as the Long Island 
potato by attending normal school in New York. 
She rather liked to look back on those years in New 
York, when she had boarded with a slat-shaped 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


13 


spinster aunt in the Bronx and come home week¬ 
ends and had looked everywhere for the heartless¬ 
ness and wickedness of the Great City, against which 
Wellport had warned her, and had found neither. 
She was not a creature to attract such qualities 
from either human beings or builded towns. 

So now we know her by sight, are a little ac¬ 
quainted with the house in which she lives and know 
something of her occupation. But we do not know 
her at all until we meet her parents. Parents are 
almost always the clue to their children. 

At sixty Mrs. Rogers, born Ella Griffig, was small 
and grey with clear, child-like blue eyes and a trick 
of wearing gold-rimmed spectacles pushed deep into 
her soft hair and then turning the house upside down 
in a frantic search for them; a little woman, never 
idle, and yet never too busy to bind up a hurt thumb 
or listen to a hard lesson; never too busy to mend 
a sweater, help with a layette or run to a neighbor’s 
with a jar of jelly, some currant wine or a custard, 
thick and creamy. She was without peer as a sick 
nurse for man or beast, and was at all times a cook 
as fit to grace a royal kitchen as Rosa Lewis herself. 
According to all the books this sort of a mother- 
person no longer exists. By all the annals of fiction, 
mothers spend their time at the radio or in winter 
resorts or in summer hotels. They ski and dance 
and golf and do other things not as wholesome. 
But looking at Ella Rogers one feels very sorry for 


14 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


all the writers and readers of fiction. They should 
tell us less about these giddy ladies and more about 
the Ella Rogerses of the world, for there are many 
of them, their name is legion. This is a large coun¬ 
try and the old stock has not been vanquished. It 
may be a bit modernized, it may ride in motors and 
not in buggies, it knows the marvels of electricity, 
it “takes” the magazines—but it lives and has its 
unconquerable being, and with it live the old tra¬ 
ditions. ,Perhaps a great many people meeting Mrs. 
Rogers would be seized with a desire to grab her 
hard, make sure she was real and then lock her up 
in a glass case, set her in a museum and label her 
“Old-Fashioned Mother. Very Rare.” Poor souls, 
they are the unfortunate ones of this earth, for 
such as Mrs. Rogers are not rare. They are the Old 
Guard and live today as truly as they lived yester¬ 
day and the pioneer day before. They live not only 
in the country but in the town and they are num¬ 
bered among the rich and the poor and the just 
middling. Thank God for them! Perhaps they 
understand this new generation better than we 
dream. Why should they not? What can be alien 
to them if it be dear and of their own? What should 
more fully equip them with comprehension if it be 
not love and service and the wisdom of clear, simple 
thinking? 

David Rogers, father of Mary Rose, was sixty 
also. But such a great, tall sixty with broad shoul- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


IS 


ders and a brown face and Mary Rose’s own brown 
eyes under a crest of thick grey hair! He was a very 
strong man physically, a slow-but-sure man mentally, 
and above all, a worker. He was also the most 
tolerant man on earth, and the best companion 
imaginable for a small chatterbox of an adventurous 
girl—and for a large, adventurous one. A silent 
man, with a drive in back of him—honest, high- 
minded, slow to anger—the best type of American. 

So now we have them. Mary Rose and her family, 
not forgetting the Nonsense Cat whose name was 
Miranda and who was, at the moment of meeting 
her, five obstreperous months old, a long, thin, rangy 
beast with a supernaturally lengthy tail and ears like 
question marks, a cat to remember, whether you 
like cats or not, and one of a long line of cherished 
tabbies, completely in tune with the generation, and 
therefore much more nonsensical than any of her 
ancestors. She lived in a basket in Mary Rose’s 
room, at such times when she was not out hunting 
what she might devour in the fields and woods. She 
was a Cat, the blood sister of Mr. Kipling’s lone 
specimen. And Mary Rose loved her as indeed 
she loved every living thing which possessed the 
least pretensions to being lovable, and as indeed she 
loved some in whom the naked eye could discern no 
such saving graces. 

“Mary Rose,” said Tom Osborne once, in a pro¬ 
found moment and to his sister, “Mary Rose is the 


16 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


most gullible creature on earth. She’d believe any¬ 
thing, trust anybody. She shouldn’t be allowed out 
without a nursemaid! And the only serious things 
about her are her affections and they are given to 
anyone, from the tramp at the door to the King of 
Spain—or the Prince of Wales,” he added a little 
gloomily. “Did you know she had his picture on her 
dresser? She told me so!” 

Tom’s maiden sister, only living relative, and 
housekeeper, laughed. 

“So have I,” she admitted, “and I’m past thirty. 
Every woman has—more or less.” She smiled a 
little at her big, blonde brother. “I wouldn’t worry 
about Mary Rose,” she said gently. “Of course she 
believes everyone and everything—but you might 
have added, only to her everything and everyone are 
worthy of belief. And what she gives, she’ll get. 
You can’t get away from that,” said Anna Osborne, 
over her sewing. Which brings us rather abruptly to 
Tom. 

Tom was Mary Rose’s nearest neighbor. He was 
big and brown like Mary Rose’s father, but there the 
resemblance ceased. Of course he was a farmer 
too, but such a very new-fangled one after his years 
at Cornell! And he was making education pay in 
dollars and cents. A successful young man, liked 
well enough by the people who had watched him 
grow up or grown up with him, but considered a little 
“sot up” and headstrong by many a quick-tempered 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


17 


person, with a single-track mind and a single-track 
heart. Into that heart at seven years old Mary Rose 
had wandered, and from the first day on which he 
had carried her school books in a shiny new strap 
and protected her from the small fry of the school 
yard, Tom had been at one and the same time her 
severest critic and her most abject slave. At that 
time he was twelve and covered with amazing 
freckles. He had, said Mary Rose in describing him 
to someone, “the hands and feet of a mastodon and 
the well-known heart of gold.” And ever since she 
could remember they two had sung together in the 
choir or hay-ridden in summer or bob-sledded in 
winter. Twice a week he made an official call at 
The Place, with the stiff white collar of ceremony 
sawing his strong neck. That corner in the attic 
which was Mary Rose’s own was filled to overflowing 
with innumerable red satin boxes, once the reposi¬ 
tories of Christmas offerings of candy, a sprig of 
artificial holly thrust through the great scarlet bow. 
And in a bandbox were his short letters from college, 
brief in content, but oh so many of them, the pro¬ 
grams of the dances to which he had squired her, 
and the valentines and Easter eggs of gay paper and 
lace and cardboard. 

And so besides house and parents and Nonsense 
Cat there was Tom. Mary Rose, a little discouraged 
with discouraging him—for she liked him so much 
—was inclined to think that there would always be 


18 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Tom. Well, after all, as she would live and die a 
spinster anyway, why shouldn’t there be Tom, a 
sort of pleasant fixture, a comfortable article of 
furniture? For Mary Rose was very firm in her 
picture of her spinsterish future. She couldn’t leave 
The Place—not for long; she couldn’t possibly leave 
Mother and Dad ever, and a husband might not care 
for Miranda, who had slightly disconcerting ways 
with trousers legs and pipes and backs of chairs. 
And it seemed to Mary Rose a little selfish to love 
just one person so hard that you shut out the rest 
of the world. The world was so wide, there were so 
many people in it—and she was twenty-two. 


CHAPTER II 


School was over and of all the happy children 
released from bondage Mary Rose was the happiest. 
A whole, lazy summer before her! Lazy? She 
pondered. “I’m getting old,” thought Mary Rose 
gloomily, walking through the woods that formed 
the boundary lines between The Place and Osbornes' 
farm. “Twenty-two! Mary Rose, my child, if ever 
you are going to do anything with your idea, it 

behooves you to hustle-” And self-chidden she 

sat down on a stump in the fresh green woods of 
June and sank her square chin in her square hand 
and crinkled up her eyes in ponderous thought. 

Anon she muttered, as one in delirium: 

“Art League? Henry Mann? If he remembered? 
Do you suppose he would?” 

The last remark, in the form of an inquiry, was 
addressed to a small grey squirrel with bright eyes 
and a swelling tail which, ensconced on another 
stump, sat up and regarded her. Mary Rose stared 
back. “If he sits still for two minutes longer,” she 
vowed, hastily glancing at her wrist watch, “I’ll do 
it!” 

Herself sat breathless, mousey-still, in order not 
to frighten away the arbiter of her fate by unseemly 
gesture or movement. One minute, two minutes. 
She drew a deep breath and stretching her slim arms 

19 


20 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


heavenward, gave utterance to a small shout. The 
squirrel, furry Destiny, looked at her with no alarm 
but with much reproach, and, chattering busily in a 
rather profane tone of voice, slipped from the stump 
and darted up a tree. 

“Perhaps that wasn’t very fair,” said Mary Rose, 
in deep distress. “After all I willed him—hypno¬ 
tized him, no less. Thank you just the same, Little 
Grey Brother,” she called, and smiled a little imp¬ 
ishly to remember, that, after all, this was a trained 
Providence, one that would probably eat out of 
her hand, for ever since Mary Rose had been able 
to stagger with the engaging year-old gait of a 
drunken sailor, she had come to these quiet woods 
and fed the birds and squirrels. Bread crumbs, 
nuts, and once, she recalled, a large slice of apple 
pie, had been spread for their delectation on the 
table-stump of a huge, felled tree. 

Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but she would abide by it. 
She went toward the house and to midday dinner 
planning her campaign and engrossed in her idea, 
for if Mary Rose had a profession—which was the 
sedate one of pedagogy—she had also an avocation, 
which was painting. A natural talent, an instinctive 
love of the best and a rejection of what was tawdry, 
insipid, ephemeral in art, were hers. She had had a 
little instruction—the usual school instruction and 
one stimulating summer in her teens when Henry 
Mann, the famous Art League instructor, had come to 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


21 


Wellport and taken a cottage there. Mary Rose found 
him once trespassing on her own particular bit of 
beach, painting the sweep of the Sound and her own 
special shiny black rock that stood up a hundred 
yards from shore like a sentinel and over which the 
little waves broke ceaselessly, shrouding its bulk 
with the feathery softness of spray. On that rock 
Mary Rose was wont to take her “shower-baths.” 
Mann, looking waterward, was not aware of any 
presence until a gasp enlightened him. Turning he 
confronted the eager, blazing eyes of a slim, long- 
legged creature with black hair in braids and its 
only garment a faded blue bathing suit. It stuck 
its brown toes into the warm sand and burrowed them 
there rapturously. 

“Well, do you like it?” Mann asked her. 

“Oh, yes,” she told him quite without shyness. 
“But there at the bottom—see? the base of the rock 
—that’s lavender ” 

He looked out thoughtfully. A trick of light? 

“So it is,” said he, with gratifying astonishment. 

That began their friendship. She tagged him up 
hill and down dale like an enchanted puppy, panting 
with enthusiasm and never weary. After a time 
she showed him her pen and ink sketches, her pencil 
drawings, her attempts at water color. And Mann, 
who found her natively gifted, was interested enough, 
enough stirred out of his customary lethargy, to give 
her those “lessons”—stimulating, inspiring and ex- 



22 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


ceedingly original in method—on which she now 
looked back with longing and gratitude. 

Henry Mann was a really great landscape and 
marine painter. Sometimes painting the Sound in 
all her many moods, he would tell Mary Rose of the 
eternal magic of flowing waters, of the beauty of 
lakes, of the unbelievable color of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, and of the strange, green-blue translucence 
of the Gulf Stream shallows. And she would listen, 
breathless with the desire for strange places. 

When Mann left Wellport he presented Mary 
Rose with two of his charming small canvases, things 
executed in a few hours, and ordered her to “keep 
on keeping on. And when you are ready to become 
a painter, which means when you are ready to starve 
and suffer and be tortured for Beauty’s sake, come 
to me.” 

She was remembering this as she walked home 
through the lush green fields and saw the smoke of 
Five Chimneys clouding the clear air. 

There was so much in this world to paint— 
beautifully and tenderly, not people, but places, 
broken fences with vines scrambling over them on 
hurried little feet, hastening in their benevolent task 
of cloaking ruin; the rocks foamed with spray; the 
great oak that hung over the beach; a glimpse of 
the Methodist Church steeple rising in the stark 
beauty of simplicity over Divinity Hill. And then 
the joy of painting in oils—a medium so unknown 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


23 


to her—of watching the gorgeous colors fly from 
brush to canvas like so many butterflies! 

She went into the house and demanded her dinner 
with the hungry insistence of a ten-year-old, but 
her eyes were wide with dreams. Fried chicken, new 
peas, asparagus—one part of her concentrated on 
these and on hot biscuits and a tall glass of creamy 
milk, and another less mundane part was far afield 
with easel and canvas and brush. 

David Rogers, laughter lurking at the corners of 
his eyes, demanded, “Seen Tom this morning, 
Daughter?” 

Mary Rose started. “No,” she said, “why?” 

“You look a little—smitten,” her father said, and 
laughed a little. It was a standing jest in the family 
that Mary Rose secretly returned Tom Osborne’s 
devotion but was too obstinate to admit it. Mary 
Rose didn’t mind. The Rogers’s way of teasing was 
very gentle and pleasant and always stopped short 
of the hurting, nagging kind which makes family 
life so unbearable to those called upon to endure it. 

Mrs. Rogers, who, with two maids in the kitchen 
and another in the laundry, allowed no meal to 
be served upon her snowy linen without her personal 
supervision, echoed the laughter and refilled Mary 
Rose’s glass from the tall pitcher. 

“I’m going to New York!” announced the spoiled 
child suddenly. Neither parent showed surprise. 
They were shock-proof. 


24 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Party dress ?” her father inquired indulgently. 

“No. Mann.” Here the parents actually started. 

“Man?” inquired her father boomingly, “what 
man?” while Mrs. Rogers echoed thinly with a rising 
inflection, “Man, Mary Rose?” 

“Dear parrots,” said their daughter with affec¬ 
tionate impudence, “two n’s. Mann. Henry Mann. 
Remember him?” 

They remembered. Very pleasantly. They had 
liked him. 

“But why?” 

Mary Rose lifted an eyebrow at her father. 

“Here I have a whole idle summer before me,” 
she announced, “and I’m going to paint it—red, blue, 
green, any old color. And I’m going to New York 
to ask Mr. Mann where I can find a teacher.” 

Her mother was horrified. “And if you do—you’ll 
go away?” 

“Maybe. But don’t be unhappy about it until it 
happens. I’ll write Mr. Mann at the League and find 
out when I can see him—and I’ll arrange to stay 
with Aunt Sarah—no, she’s in Connecticut—with 
Aunt Evie then, in Brooklyn. Just overnight. And 
then I’ll come home and tell you all about it.” 

There were no arguments. The parents of this 
child had learned that when she made up her mind 
there was very little budging her and, as she never 
made up her mind foolishly, they were content to 
have it so. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


25 


She wrote to Henry Mann that night, at the Art 
League, and waited his answer in fluttered trepida¬ 
tion. It came and gave her a luncheon appointment 
for the next day but one. And in the heat of a late 
June morning, Mary Rose set out on the first lap 
of her journey toward her own Mecca. 

She met Mr. Mann in a quiet small tearoom off 
the Avenue in the Thirties and was happy to see he 
had not changed. Older perhaps, more grey, but the 
same nice person, with the greenish-hazel eyes and 
the heavy shoulders. He rose from the table he had 
been guarding, such a tiny, fragile table for his great 
bulk, and twinkled at her as she came toward him, 
cool-seeming in a little tan linen suit with a jaunty 
green cockade hat on her dark curls. 

“It certainly isn’t—of course not! But it is— 
Yes, by all that’s wonderful—Mary Rose!” 

Her small hand engulfed in his, she twinkled back. 
“Don’t say ‘how you’ve grown!’ ” she implored him. 

“I shan’t.” He pulled out her chair for her and 
seated himself opposite, brushing aside a vase with 
three wilted flowers in it, with an impatient gesture. 
“On the contrary-” 

He turned to a hovering waitress and gave an 
order, then looked back at his guest, “On the con¬ 
trary, I think you’ve shrunk or something. Not as 
weedy as once you were. The years have been 
becoming to you. And are you still a school-teacher? 
Wasn’t that what you were planning? I can see 



26 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


you now sitting on that tumble-down stone fence 
swinging your long legs in their white stockings— 
with rips in ’em, stockings, not legs, I mean, and 
chanting ‘Pm going to be a school-teacher! I’m 
going to be a school-teacher—gosh durn the luck! ’ ” 

“I can ’t believe it,” answered Mary Rose, sedately. 
“Anyway, I am a teacher. Of my own free will— 
if there is such a thing. Lowest grades in grammar, 
I confess it. However, I am here to tell you that 
most of my dear little pupils—wretches, all of them 
—passed in their last exams. Don’t look so aston¬ 
ished. 'Aber fragt mich nur nicht; wie?’ ” She 
quoted out of her beloved Heine with an execrable 
accent. 

“I won’t,” he assured her, “I am discreet,” and 
leaning forward he plucked her hand from the table 
cloth and regarded it critically before he laid it down 
again. 

Mary Rose armed the scrutinized member with a 
large roll and shook it in his face just as the dejected 
waitress came back with their salads and cold cuts 
and iced tea. “Inky? Never in this world! The last 
papers were corrected days ago!” 

“I wasn’t looking for ink,” he answered her, quite 
soberly, although an amazing ripple ran audibly and 
visibly along his well padded ribs, “I was looking 
for lines of Fate, and paint stains. What have you 
done with your talent, Mary Rose?” 

Hidden it under a bushel of copy books in the 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


27 


back yard of school,” she answered, “and I want to 
dig it up again. That’s why I’m here. It was 
awfully kind of you to give me your time—and 
oh, Mr. Mann, I’ve come all the way up-” 

“Seventy miles,” said he with unkind disparage¬ 
ment, “and it took you how many years—five, isn’t 
it? to get that far. I’ve always had my own opinion 
of the Long Island Railroad, but that beats any-” 

“Hush!” commanded Mary Rose, with a fright¬ 
ened glance around her. “If there should be an 
official in the room! ” 

“There isn’t. They eat at the Ritz, so I’m told.” 

She laughed a little at his grave expression and 
went on. 

“I want to study. I’ve saved a little. Land¬ 
scapes, you know. I have an itch to paint places. 
People are so deadly. No matter how well you get 
the likeness, no matter how marvelous the color, 
when they are once on canvas somehow they— 
aren’t. Or if they are, it’s in just one mood. A 
company, dressed-up mood—show-off. But with 
places, houses and fields and water—that’s different. 
They’ll sit for you forever, patiently, and never tire. 
You can take them in one mood or fifty—they are 
always lovely. And you needn’t flatter them or im¬ 
plore them to ‘hold still, just a minute please!’ And 
they won’t quarrel with you over the dress they 
simply must wear or which string of pearls and 
‘don’t forget to take out the wrinkles! ’ And neither 




28 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


will they change their mind at the fourth sitting 
about the height of a collar or the set of a trans¬ 
formation. How about the League, Mr. Mann?” 

“Not in summer, my giddy child.” 

She drooped. 

“And anyway the League isn't for you,” he 
amplified. “Out of doors is your place. There are 
summer schools—Woodstock for one—and at Prov- 
incetown—but they aren't for you, either.” 

“I suppose,” she murmured, looking with distaste 
at a wilted piece of lettuce, and feeling a great 
sickness at her heart, “I suppose it wouldn’t be worth 
while, really.” 

He hastened to reassure her. His words fell over 
each other, all topsy-turvy, playing a comforting sort 
of leap frog over one another’s backs. 

“You go too fast—and jump at conclusions. Most 
tiring activity. It is worth while. Very much so. 
But it's not worth while for you to lodge in an arty 
bungalow somewhere and listen to gabble and garble 
and gabble and garble yourself. Not that they all 
do. God forbid. But—you are an imitative little 
thing, Mary Rose, and might easily go with the 
majority. As for the League, I wouldn’t recommend 
it to your particular type.” 

“Type?” she asked, incensed. 

^ “Type,” he firmly repeated. “You might drift to 
the Village,” he groaned, “and I couldn’t bear that. 
Not really. I have something in mind for you, 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


29 


something so much better, something that would 
keep you where you belong in the red farmhouse 
that I so well remember, sitting on broken-down 
fences and going home to your mother in the dusk.” 
He laughed a little, “That sounds pretty terrible, 
doesn’t^it? But if you knew how sorry I am for the 
absurd little atoms who come to New York from all 
points of the compass and get their pinafores painty 
and learn a lot of jargon and very little else and 
do an advertisement or two—and have no mothers 
near enough to go home to. Tell me, Mary Rose, 
would your mother take a boarder for the summer?” 

Mary Rose gaped. Her amusing mouth formed a 
perfect O of amazement. 

“She never has,” she answered dizzily. 

“Of course not, I know. But it’s this way. I am 
very interested in a young fellow here, a really excel¬ 
lent artist. Right in your line, too. Not a student, 
on the contrary a hard-working person with a wee 
studio of his own. He has exhibited successfully 
and is becoming known. He’s not, however, very 
well off yet as regards material things. I happen 
to know that he wants very much to paint on Long 
Island this summer, rove, more or less, but desires 
a place to come back to from his wanderings. Now, 
if your mother would give him a room and an 
occasional meal, the lessons would find themselves, 
Mary Rose, and I think you’d have a wonderful 
summer.” 


30 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She gaped wider. “What’s his name?” she asked 
feebly. Somehow she felt that if she could put a 
handle to him he would seem more real. And she 
couldn’t picture Ella Griffig Rogers with a boarder! 

“Dean. John Dean. He’s about three and 
thirty/’ answered Mr. Mann with increasing 
twinkles, “and while I cannot truthfully say that I 
find him beautiful, a number of the artistic maidens 
hereabouts seem to.” Mary Rose snorted, an im¬ 
polite sound. 

“You aren’t a man-hater, are you?” he asked 
anxiously, “not intending a pun on my own poor 
name and person. I hope not. They are dreadful 
people. And that reminds me, what has become of 
the large youth who used to hang around our fences 
at inopportune moments and look at our pictures 
much too close up and scoff in slow Long Islandese?” 

Mary Rose blushed, most unexpectedly to herself, 
and then did it again because she was both angry 
and astonished at her lack of facial control. 

“Oh—ho!” said he. 

“Not at all. Nothing oh-ho-ish about it,” rebelled 
Mary Rose hotly as she buried her small nose in a 
fresh, tinkly glass of tea and sneezed because the 
sprig of mint tickled her. “You mean Tom Osborne, 

I suppose. Well, he’s larger than ever and still 
around.” 

“Likewise ah—ha!” commented Mr. Mann fool¬ 
ishly. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


31 


Luncheon was about over. After the tea was 
downed there was no further excuse for lingering. 
Waiting for his change, Mr. Mann suggested: 

“Well—suppose I send Dean down to see you. 
It couldn’t possibly do any harm. If your little 
mother sweeps him off her immaculate doorstep as 
so much trash, why then we’ll try and cook up some 
other scheme. Be sure that I shall keep you in mind. 
You’ll be famous some day or I’ll eat a tube of 
ochre!” 

That was a cheery word to take with her into 
the subway, and all the hot, choking way to Brook¬ 
lyn, Mary Rose repeated it to herself. 

“Why,” she said in astonishment, as she alighted, 
climbed the many steps and emerged into the after¬ 
noon glare of Borough Hall, “it was awfully nice of 
him, but I don’t believe I want to be ‘famous.’ I’d 
rather be—loved,” which was a large order, for she 
was thinking of a very different love than that of 
which most young females of two and twenty dream. 

Aunt Evie Rogers lived in a little apartment on 
Columbia Heights. She was a fat and placid person 
who adored her niece and by no means comprehended 
her. She looked on her as something rare and un¬ 
usual, as different from other girls as an orchid is 
from a bouncing Betsey. But she was mistaken. 
There was no suggestion of the hothouse or the 
tropics about Mary Rose. 

That night Mary Rose looked from her windows 


32 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


over the river and saw the lights of New York shine 
out across the dark water, brilliant and untiring. 
“It’s pretty,” she said to Aunt Evie, laughing a little, 
“but is it art?” 

“Art?” asked her bewildered relative. “How do 
I know? I declare, you do upset a person, Mary 
Rose, bouncing around in your talk the way you 
do. You were just telling me about Lou Perkins? 
Is she still after Tom?” 

“She is. She writes poetry about him; at least 
I think it is poetry, in the Suffolk Herald. And it 
must be about him because it’s all strewn with 
brawny arms and strong hands and all the rest of 
it. Lou’s too pretty to write poetry—or, at least, 
her kind of it. I saved you a piece from last week’s 
‘Woman’s Page.’ Here it is.” 

They had been sitting in the cool dark. Now 
Mary Rose snapped on a light and fumbled in her 
hand bag. Aunt t Evie adjusted her glasses with 
interest and read slowly from the clipping, moving 
her lips silently to the words. 

“He stands amid the emerald field, 

The sun upon his face, 

His mighty strength it is revealed, 

Likewise his manly grace. 

“His arms are strong, his heart is kind, 

But oh, he loves not me, 

Another such you will not find 
From inland shore to sea.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


33 


“Well,” inquired Mary Rose, soberly, “what do 
you think of it?” 

Aunt Evie looked mildly dazed. She was a very 
warm-hearted woman and not given to criticism. 
Live and let live was her motto. 

“Well—I suppose it’s real pretty,” she murmured, 
“but if, as you say, it was meant for Tom, I don’t 
call that nice, somehow.” 

“And so very vain, don’t you think,” pursued 
Mary Rose. “See here, where she says he doesn’t 
love her and that you won’t find any one else in 
a like case of indifference from inland shore to sea.” 

“Perhaps she means the Sound,” returned Aunt 
Evie with unconscious sarcasm, “it’s only a step from 
the Perkins place to the Sound and no human soul 
lives on it.” 

Mary Rose shouted. “What a duck you are! A 
regular fluffy, innocent Long Island duck. Aunt 
Evie, I love you!” 

Miss Rogers took the embrace which followed this 
outburst with outward placidity and even indiffer¬ 
ence, but her round, unwrinkled cheeks flushed 
prettily. 

“Mercy to goodness! Child, you’re half crazy, 
rumpling me up like that.” 

“Don’t you like it?” asked the child, round-eyed 
with reproach. 

“Of course I do,” admitted her aunt. But she 
still trailed Lou and Tom. 


34 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Tom, now—he used always to he so fond of 
you. Last summer, I remember, he came often to 
The Place.” 

“This summer, too,” said Mary Rose yawning. 
“Wait till you come down—you can entertain him. 
I believe you always did have a soft spot in your 
heart for Tom Osborne.” 

“Don’t be silly. Do you think Lou Perkins will 
get him?” 

“Over my dead body. He’s much too good for 
her.” 

“Then why don’t you take him yourself?” asked 
Aunt Evie, baldly. 

“For the same reason, darling!” Aunt Evie 
sighed. 

“I give you up. As for Tom,” she warned darkly, 
“the way you treat him—it’s not nice either to keep 
him dangling. He will have his come-uppance some 
day.” Mary Rose laughed. 

“ ‘Sufficient unto——’ ” she began, “and now, if 
I’m going to get that dreadful eight-something back 
to my deserted parents and Miranda, I’ll have to go 
to bed.” 



CHAPTER III 


Mary Rose endured the hot, dusty, jerky ride 
with fortitude but on approaching her parents lost 
something of her courage. 

Joe, in the Ford, awaited her. Every mile of 
the familiar, dear road home she was childishly 
praying, “Please make them, Lord! Please!” 

After dinner the subject was broached: Boarder 
or no boarder. To Mary Rose’s misgivings, but not 
at all to her surprise, neither her mother nor her 
father would hear of such a thing. 

A man, an artist, a boarder! What combination 
could have been worse? In vain Mary Rose pleaded 
that Mr. Dean was a very harmless man, a very good 
artist and a most intermittent boarder. 

“We haven’t room,” said her mother, “with Evie 
coming and Sarah—and Jim and his children—that’s 
flat. And if you think I’m going to cook my head 
off for a strange man with city tastes in food, you’re 
very much mistaken! ” 

“But, Mother,” wailed Mary Rose, “I must have 
those lessons! I must! I—I’m at the boiling point 
inside. I have to learn or just naturally blow up. 
I can’t go on puttering forever, making the same old 
mistakes and getting nowhere. And I don’t want 
to go away-” 4 

She elaborated on summer schools and David 
35 



36 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Rogers flushed a little under his tan while Mrs. 
Rogers went white. Mary Rose away! They re¬ 
called the dreadful months that held her in the city 
while they, poor things, lived literally from week¬ 
end to week-end. 

“All summer? I won’t have it!” 

“And you won’t have Mr. Dean either?” 

“No!” And there the matter rested. 

However Mrs. Rogers had reckoned without 
Dean. A wire preceded him a day later. He arrived 
at The Place in a hack, walked in and proceeded to 
make a killing—not of Mary Rose, but of her more 
susceptible mother. 

Mr. Rogers was out in the fields when John Dean 
arrived by the noon—sometimes—train. Mary 
Rose, torn between fear and excitement, received 
him in the cool, dim parlor where strangers, accord¬ 
ing to tradition, were always taken. If they left 
off being strangers, they were escorted into the 
living-room. This was the routine of The Place. 

John Dean proved a friendly person, rather short 
and rather round, with charming eyes, intensely blue, 
under a shock of unruly black hair. Mary Rose 
liked him on sight. After the preliminaries, dur¬ 
ing which Mrs. Rogers disapprovingly entered the 
room, he started in to talk business. 

“Mr. Mann told me that perhaps you’d be so 
uncommonly gracious as to let me have a bed here 
—for the summer. And now that I’m here I wish 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


37 


I might permanently occupy it—in the hours set 
aside for sleep, I mean. Truly, I wouldn’t bother 
you much; I’d be tramping all over the Island and 
just turning up now and then.” 

Mrs. Rogers shot Mary Rose a glance of triumph. 
It said, quite plainly, “And did you expect to tramp 
with him?” 

But Dean was smiling, very much at his ease. 
“You could stick me in the attic, you know—or out 
in the woodshed. I’d be perfectly happy.” 

Mrs. Rogers eyed him. It was evident to Mary 
Rose that he was being very fascinating—to Mrs. 
Rogers. 

“I was born up-State, you see,” he went on without 
much relevance, “in a house very much like this 
one. No water, of course, but hills and dales and 
meadows. And we had the very twin brother to 
that well I saw as I drove up. Have you a wooden 
bucket on a chain that clanks? Very gruesome! 
And that cooky, baky, cake-and-coffee smell on the 
wind as I passed the kitchen porch—I used to know 
that fragrance by heart.” His voice dropped a little 
and he looked like a temperamental, very engaging 
baby. “I just about used to wreck that kitchen on 
baking days—when mother was there-” 

“Was?” asked Mary Rose’s mother. 

He nodded. He looked very unhappy all of a 
sudden. Mrs. Rogers thought a moment. 

“We’re very plain people, Mr. Dean,” she said 



38 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


quaintly, “but if you could put up with us-?” 

His infantile, ridiculously blue eyes opened to their 
widest and really shone. 

“If? With the putting up all the other way, Mrs. 
Rogers.” 

“And now,” she said comfortably, “that’s that. 
All settled. Come whenever you’ve a mind to, Mr. 
Dean, and stay to dinner with us now. There’s no 
train back until three. I’ll get you a glass of butter¬ 
milk; you must be warm and tired. You drink it, 
don’t you?” 

He looked at her with a sort of dumb worship in 
his gaze. 

“Drink it!” he breathed devoutly. “Only when I 
get the chance!” 

And for Mary Rose, to that young person’s normal 
chagrin, he had neither word nor look. 

Mrs. Rogers started to leave the room but he 
barred her way, deftly. 

“We haven’t discussed—terms,” he said, smiling. 
“Isn’t that a hateful word? It shouldn’t be used 
to you any more than to Saint Peter himself! ” 

Mary Rose chuckled, certain that her orthodox 
parent would be shocked right out of her little shoes, 
but nothing so alarming occurred. Mrs. Rogers only 
laughed, her low, very youthful laughter. 

“We have no terms for friends,” she said sweetly. 
“And we are so grateful to you—you’ll help Mary 
Rose so much.” 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


39 


And she was gone from the room. 

Then and only then did the prospective boarder 
turn to Mary Rose and apparently he was startled 
to see her there. He must have forgotten her. 

“Isn’t she a wonder?” he exulted. “But did she 
mean it? I couldn’t, no, not really,” he sighed, 
while his smooth-skinned face assumed a most dolor¬ 
ous expression. “No, it’s out of the question,” he 
repeated very firmly, with the air of a small boy 
who is offered a “second help” at a party and re¬ 
members that his mother has said he mustn’t! 

“Why not?” asked Mary Rose, laughing at his 
evident woe. “If Mother has accepted you, you’ll 
never be able to get out of it.” 

“Do you think so?” He was eager and relieved 
and went on, “As for teaching, Mr. Mann told me 
about you—and I’d love to do it. But I am afraid 
I’d be a bit of a loss as a teacher—I want to wander, 
you see. I am very anxious to catch bits of the 
Island in all its changes—scrub oak, sand and cedar, 
pine and fir and the curious moorland of Montauk 
Point. I want to get the flat and the hilly, the green 
and the brown. I want to go inland and I want to 
do sand dunes, ocean and bay and Sound. I want to 
spend the whole summer, into the late fall if pos¬ 
sible, discovering this amazing island for myself.” 

Mary Rose felt fired with his enthusiasm. She 
loved Long Island, and here was a fellow worshipper. 

“I’m so glad you feel that way,” she assured him. 


40 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“So do I, and when you come back now and then 
from your travels, I shall be waiting on the doorstep 
with requests for aid and comfort.” His face, a little 
clouded, cleared. 

“Oh, I’d be back every few days—if only for a 
change of linen,” he laughed, “for I intend to travel 
very light indeed. I could set you your ‘stint’ and 
then go off and when I returned, rip it to pieces. 
Would that be satisfactory?” 

He was anxious again. Mary Rose hastily assured 
him it was the very plan of her dreams and they 
shook hands on it, soberly. The ceremony was just 
concluded when Mrs. Rogers came back with the 
buttermilk and the suggestion that they adjourn to 
the living-room. Mary Rose left them together 
talking like old friends who have been parted for a 
space, and ran up to the attic to bring forth the 
more recent of her sketches. 

Returning she had literally to hurl herself, bomb¬ 
like, into their absorbed conversation. Finally he 
took the sheets from her hands and looked at them. 

“You need very little teaching,” he said after a 
time, very quietly. “I think you have that rare 
thing, a talent, gift, genius, what you will, which has 
slowly and naturally developed without the help 
which might have been a hindrance. I envy you.” 

Mary Rose was overcome. Mrs. Rogers looked 
a mild I-told-you-so. Nothing wonderful about her 
child could astonish her. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


41 


“Color—lovely—these water colors/’ he mur¬ 
mured, his head bent and his eyes grave. “And 
this sketch of the cliffs with the blowy tree—it’s 
alive . I should be very happy to help you in all 
I may/’ he said simply, “for I shall like some 
day to boast that I had the merest finger in this 
very fine pie of yours, Miss Rogers.” 

Then, as Mrs. Rogers departed to look after the 
dinner, they talked awhile of drawing and color, oils 
and pencil, lights and shades and values, and the joy 
of seeing things come true under one’s fingers. 

“Your work is so clean,” he told her once. “Clear 
cut. It doesn’t hesitate, it doesn’t evade, it never 
tricks. There are, of course, one or two things for 
you to learn. There are always things for all of us 
to learn as long as we finger a pencil or brush. What 
I know, I shall pass on, but Nature was your first 
teacher,” he added, laughingly, “as I believe some 
poet chap said ahead of me. However, it is quite 
true in your unusual case. Yours is one case in a 
thousand and you have nothing to unlearn, which is 
half the battle. I am really longing to set you adrift 
among oils and see what you make of that medium.” 

David Rogers came in and the two men met, one 
cordial and the other grateful. After Mr. Dean had 
gone to his train, burdened with the self-imposed task 
of buying all his pupil’s new materials for her, Rogers 
turned to his wife with a hint of amusement about 
his clean-shaven lips. 


42 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“So—you’ve taken a boarder, Ella I” he said. 

“She fell for him like a shot,” said the inelegant 
Mary Rose. Mrs. Rogers was discomforted. 

“Don’t be silly and don’t be pert,” she said, 
addressing the two of them with impartial severity. 
“He’s a very nice boy. Henry would have been 

about his age-” She broke off and her two 

listeners knew she was thinking of the little boy 
who once had made the old house ring with his 
shouts and whose marks were on it to this day, 
the brother Mary Rose had never known, the son 
Ella and silent David Rogers had so loved. “And 
there’s room and to spare,” she went on, “in this 
barn of a house. We have space for twenty. He’ll 
be no trouble at all—such nice manners. But he 
don’t seem to have much of an appetite,” she mused 
to herself, “not like a man, that is, more like a girl 
—sort of picky—here a dab, and there a bite. I 
must feed him up on milk and get him fattened.” 

“Mother! He’s as round as a butter ball now! 
He looks just like a Kewpie—like the one Dads won 
for me knocking down ninepins at the last River- 
head Fair!” 

“It’s not wholesome fat,” said her mother, with 
conviction. “Looks like hotel fat to me. I’ll cook 
him up some special things. He’ll get so’s he’ll tell 
me what he likes,” she predicted, “and—it will be 
nice to have a boy in the house again and hear him 
stomping around—although goodness knows your 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


43 


father makes enough noise for two as it is/’ she 
added, contrariwise. 

They had to laugh. She was such a darling. They 
hugged her, both of them and at the same time, until 
there was quite a medley of arms and faces and 
murmurs. 

Henry was only seven when he died, yet she had 
seen him again in this strange young man who had 
spoken to her of his own mother. 

Mary Rose went to bed in a whirl. So her work 
was really worth while! She hoped that he knew 
something about it—and then was reassured by the 
remembrance of Mr. Mann’s enthusiasm concerning 
Dean. He had said, seeing her to the subway, that 
Dean was a “born teacher and critic, as well as an 
artist.” That was comforting. Mary Rose was very 
near the seventh heaven that night—about as far as 
the fifth, perhaps. 

“Cat!” she said severely to the loping Miranda, 
who was dashing about insecurely on the canopy, 
“Cat! Come down! You are in the exalted presence 
of a famous woman. Come off that!” 

Miranda opened green-grey-brown eyes and sat 
on the post licking a paw. Her tail waved slowly 
—she meditated—a sudden spring and a leap—and 
she had disappeared into a wash pitcher, luckily 
not filled with water. The Place was well equipped 
with modern bathrooms, but Mary Rose had so 
loved that particular washstand and set that it had 


44 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


remained in the room—in use mostly for flowers. 

The cat’s head and her curiously anxious, rather 
wild face peered over the top of the pitcher. 

Mary Rose hauled her out by the scruff of her 
white neck. “Be good!” 

She dropped the animal to the floor. Miranda 
crouched there and then, with a strange sound more 
like a bird squawk than a feline cry, she approached 
Mary Rose’s bootlace, bit at it, nipped her ankle 
and, leaping backward, her thin body arched like a 
hoop and her tail enormous, she hid in a corner where 
presently she sat up on her hind legs and—because 
she was a completely Nonsense Cat—smiled broadly. 

Mary Rose chuckled her way into bed. Miranda 
was such a charming creature. As she fell asleep, 
she murmured, “I must tell Tom.” 

She always “told Tom.” 

The following night was one of the established 
calling nights. They sat out on the south porch 
swing under the splendor of the ramblers and Tom 
was told. He was rather nasty. 

“Long hair, I suppose?” 

“Quite thick. But shorter than yours in back— 
half an inch,” said Mary Rose, viciously. 

He put up one mammoth hand and felt ruefully 
of the back of his tanned neck. 

“I do need a hair cut,” he said, mournfully, “but 
you needn’t rub it in.” 

“The hair cut?” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


45 


In mutual silence they munched from the box of 
fudge Tom had brought up from the Wellport Candy 
Kitchen. Lou Perkins ran that Candy Kitchen. 
Idly, Mary Rose wondered if Lou would bring her 
poetic imagination to bear along Borgia lines and 
poison Tom’s semi-weekly offering? 

“Palavery?” he questioned further. 

Mary Rose was quite used to the working of 
Tom’s mind. It was ponderous but it got there; not 
always right but always sure it was right. 

“Not a bit. Mother adored him.” 

“I never saw a girl like you, Mary Rose,” he 
grumbled, ignoring this silver-plated recommenda¬ 
tion, “always going off at half cock about every 
person you meet with art kinks in his head. Maybe 
I don’t remember you and this fellow Mann. You 
trailed him as if you were a kitten and he a bunch 
of catnip. He couldn’t take a step for falling over 
you.” 

Mary Rose laughed outright. She loved the meta¬ 
phor. High-stepping catnip was new to her. 

“All right, laugh,” he said, with no enthusiasm in 
the granted permission, “but if it wasn’t Mann it 
was some Wellport summerer who yapped around 
about careers. Couldn’t you manage to make me 
your career, Mary Rose?” he asked wistfully and 
with the delightful selfishness of a man deeply in 
love. 

Mary Rose was a little startled, not because he 


46 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


had proposed to her for the umpty-umpth time but 
because he had gone about it in a slightly different 
way. 

“No, dear,” she said regretfully, “I couldn’t!” 

He was no longer wistful. He was angry. 

“Look at your mother!” he demanded explosively, 
and indeed at an apropos moment, for Mrs. Rogers 
was passing by the open windows near them and 
Mary Rose was quite able to look at her. “Isn’t 
she happy? Just married? I remember you told 
me once you couldn’t bear to be ‘just married.’ ” 

“Mother isn’t me,” said Mary Rose with a fine 
disregard of the grammar she was paid to impart 
and instil. “She’s not Mary Rose; and she was born 
to be married and happy and loved.” 

“Isn’t every woman born for that?” he cut in with 
a little scorn. 

She had to be truthful with him. She was innately 
so. 

“Perhaps. I don’t know. How can I tell? But 
Mother never had a—well, call it talent, if you will, 
or call it just an idea, if you must—anyway, whatever 
you call it, something that she had to follow and 
work out and develop and brood over. She had 
children—maybe it’s the same thing in a way,” said 
Mary Rose becoming confused at the chaos of her 
own thoughts. “Anyway—she hadn’t what I have, 
and I must paint. I must!” 

She was defiant—like the kitten Tom had com- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


47 


pared her with, flirting peevish whiskers at a great 
St. Bernard. 

“Couldn’t you paint without the aid of young 
male instructors?” he asked, with sarcasm and a 
revealing of the real source of rancor. Then, before 
she had time to be vocally angry, he added with a 
change of tone, “Only marry me, Mary Rose and I 
will—carry you on my hands—and you shall paint 
away to your little heart’s content. I know just the 
room for you, the room with the north light in the 
old house. We could make a studio of it—a jim 
dandy.” 

He was awfully dear. She admitted it. She 
liked him so much. And he spoke of painting as 
if it were a toy with which a child might be allowed 
to play in a safe, screened nursery, a toy it might 
soon tire of and throw away. 

“I—so sorry-” said Mary Rose. 

He left soon after that—gloomy but not really 
discouraged. He adhered to the drop of water and 
rock theory; sooner or later she must love him. He 
often wondered why he kept on loving her. There 
were other girls—but no other Mary Rose. It was 
a habit, he told himself as he tramped over the short 
cut in the full moonlight, a habit of which he could 
not rid himself—nor did he want to. 



CHAPTER IV 


“I’m afraid you’ve made a very bad bargain,” 
mock-mourned the boarder to Mary Rose as they 
set forth together on a little journey of discovery 
three days later. 

Mary Rose looked up at him—or rather, gazed 
practically level-eyed at him, as she answered him, 
smiling, “Well, I’ve always been something of a 
gambler.” 

Armed with the implements of their craft, the 
two staggered over fences and down gullies in the 
clear light of the early July morning. Dean was in 
exuberant spirits. He liked everything he saw, 
particularly Mary Rose in her faded green gingham 
with her curly dark hair catching the sunlight and 
loving it too well to let it go. He looked at her 
with a little pity in his heart. She was such a happy 
thing! It didn’t seem possible that she could go 
through life as happy as she now was. He feared 
a little for her and had a sudden, unusual instinct 
of protection toward this friendly little stranger. 

“Oh, Mary Rose,” he wanted to say to her, “don’t 
paint! Don’t struggle and suffer and faint to express 
yourself on a mere piece of canvas! Can’t you be 
content with just existing—as a butterfly or a bird 
48 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


49 


or that bit of wild rose over there exists—for you 
are so like all three of them?” 

Aloud, he said, “Do you know, Miss Rogers— 
you’ll think me mad, but then many people do, so 
let it go at that, I don’t mind anyway—what I want 
to say is——” 

Mary Rose slipped on a treacherous bit of brush 
and slid down the last few feet to the beach. 
Arrived, she sat there in the warm sand, clutching 
the precious things she carried with her. 

“I say! are you hurt?” anxiously inquired her 
teacher as he finally arrived beside her, by a more 
decorous route. 

“No. But what were you talking about? You 
sounded just like a Wodehouse character—all broken 
bits of talk, minus the accent and the ‘old egg,’ of 
course.” 

Dean laughed and sat down in sand, sifting a 
handful through his clever fingers and looking out 
over the shining water. A great oak tree, growing 
half way up the bank, bent heavy branches over 
the beach and formed a tent of emerald shade 
checkered with sun. 

“Lovely,” he murmured, as his eyes followed the 
course of a white sail, like the flash of a gull’s wing, 
outlined against the sky with the woods of the 
opposite shore back of it. 

Mary Rose sighed patiently. 

The little man blushed, unexpectedly, “Well— 


50 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


what I wanted to say was—you seem to me the 
happiest creature I have ever met, and I want to 
know how you do it.” 

She looked at him thoughtfully, “Happy? Am 
I? I suppose I am. I never thought much about it.” 

She fell silent and Dean, his eyes still on the boat 
as she passed leaving a foaming wake, her sails full- 
bellied in the south wind, thought, “I suppose that 
is the secret. All these people hunting for happiness 
—frantic and feverish, and here’s a girl like joy 
incarnate who is happy because she doesn’t ‘think 
about it.’ ” 

Aloud he said, “Well, as I’m giving you several 
days of my valuable time uninterrupted, how about 
getting started?” 

That morning was the first lesson, and afterwards 
they lunched under the oak tree tent, on thin 
chicken and lettuce sandwiches, wonderful milk in 
a thermos, little rosy radishes, and three kinds of 
jam and cookies. It was dusk before they came back 
to Five Chimneys again, a little sunburned, a little 
tired, and as happy with each other as old comrades 
are. 

She missed him when he went off on his first 
tramping tour by foot and “by hitches” in the gen¬ 
eral direction of the Hamptons. Here he was going 
to steep himself in the atmosphere of ocean and 
dunes, those wonderful heaps of sand that look as 
if a giant mole had burrowed there, undulating 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


51 


mounds that have a look of endurance about them 
for all their softness, a look of gentle tenacity. 

But he had opened a new world to her. She 
painted, painted from morning to night, and when 
he returned a week later, brown as an Indian and 
enthusiastic as a two-year-old, she had “ruined a 
mile of canvas and squandered a quart of paint,” as 
she told him. 

But Dean waved her aside as if she had been an 
impertinent and buzzing gnat and set to work. He 
condemned, praised, criticized and enthused all in 
one breath and for the next three days drove her as 
a slave driver, firing her with quite superfluous en¬ 
thusiasm—and then, with a parting mandate or two, 
set forth on his gypsy-like journeys again. 

This was the routine of the summer. Paint and 
wait for John Dean, listen and learn and watch then 
paint and wait again. She had never known so 
breathless, so keyed-up a time. And her work was 
good; there was no gainsaying it. 

August had come in, hot, still and hazy, when, on 
one of Dean’s absences, Lou Perkins came to see 
her. She found her, as usual, after a long and 
excessively warm search, out in a field, painting a 
tumble-down barn, her face smeared with various 
colors, her hair in wild disorder and her frock a 
fit subject for the rag bag. 

“Hello, Lou,” said Mary Rose absently and waved 
her brush in greeting. 


52 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Miss Perkins shrieked and dodged a flying blob 
of carmine. She looked over Mary Rose’s shoulder, 
her small nose within an inch of the canvas and her 
near-sighted eyes intent. “Vital,” she murmured 
raptly, “very vital —but—not my medium.” 

Mary Rose grinned. Miss Perkins seated herself 
artistically on the broken rail of the fence and gazed 
thoughtfully at her contemporary. Mary Rose 
gazed back. For the twentieth time she thought, 

“How very pretty that girl is—what a pity-” and 

left it all unfinished. 

Louise Perkins was about twenty-five, a round, 
dimpled person with fat little hands as white as 
milk and a mop of curly yellow hair. Her near¬ 
sighted eyes were round and cerulean and her small 
mouth pink as a Dorothy Perkins. She was really 
a good-hearted little creature, an excellent cook, and 
immensely serious. Just now, after a spring visit to 
a second cousin on Tenth Street, she went in for 
Batik effects, long and clinging, which in no way 
became her. She was built for white muslin with a 
blue sash and a great floppy Leghorn hat tied under 
her dimpled chin. 

She was the daughter of very well-to-do and 
“superior” people. Her father was the leading law¬ 
yer in the county, her mother was of the Connecti¬ 
cut “Warrens.” She had been to a boarding school 
on the Hudson and had an aunt in the social register. 
She was a small bundle of enthusiasms, happy- 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


53 


hearted, good-natured and rather simple, unhappy 
only when out of love, a state of heart which, for¬ 
tunately for her and her family, was of rare 
occurrence. 

“Mary Rose,” she said solemnly, “did you read my 
last poem in the Herald?” 

Mary Rose had. Squinting a trifle to get just the 
effect she wanted, she answered, at random, “Very 
pretty.” 

Lou’s pink mouth drooped. “Oh, dear,” she said, 
“I hoped it was more than that.” After a silence 
she said wistfully, “Mary Rose, do you suppose—” 

“That Tom read it?” asked Mary Rose briskly. 
“No. Can you imagine Tom turning to the Woman’s 
Page?” 

In a very guilty voice, the small person in Batik 
answered, “I sent him—marked copy-” 

Mary Rose suppressed a chuckle. There were 
other people in the world who believed in the drop 
of water and rock theory. And Lou would make a 
good wife—but not for Tom. 

She said nothing, and a moment later Lou re¬ 
marked hopefully, “I sent a poem in the other day 
to The Dust Pan , you know that wonderful, radical 
sheet, just fugitive verse and prose—awfully inter¬ 
esting. I’ll bring you a copy. They don’t pay for 
contributions, of course, while they are getting on 
their feet but it’s a great honor to be accepted by 
them. They prefer free verse-” 




54 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She made a motion toward a large, bulging pocket 
and Mary Rose sighed and laid down her brush. 
Better face the inevitable with courage. “And did 
they take your poem?” she asked. 

“N-no—but they wrote, the editor did, on a slip 
of yellow paper and said it was not for lack of merit 
but because they felt that perhaps my thought was 
not quite clear enough—not—not passionate enough, 
he said. He said that a love poem should be ‘fiercely 
untrammeled.’ I think that’s such a wonderful 
expression, don’t you? And that, perhaps, if I 
would study their magazine more, I would see 
exactly what he meant. He said he was very inter¬ 
ested in me and hoped I would continue to send him 
things. Wasn’t that encouraging?” 

“Very,” answered her auditor heartily. “I suppose 
you subscribe.” 

Lou’s eyes were guileless as she lifted their blue 
shallows to Mary Rose’s. “Of course. I’m a 
founder!” said she proudly. 

The sheet of paper in her pocket burned that small 
hand. Mary Rose, her thoughts on her own picture, 
and her eyes on Lou, asked, “Is that the poem? Do 
read it.” 

Lou blushed. “I’ve changed it a little. I’m going 
to send it in again—I feel that the county papers 
are too—inhibited,” she said proudly, and Mary 
Rose nearly fell off her canvas stool as the word 
tripped easily from those rosebud lips. The Dust 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


55 


Pan indeed! Mary Rose had an impulse to shake 
the editor. She was intuitively sure she was physi¬ 
cally capable of it. 

Lou unfolded the paper, and Mary Rose caught 
a glimpse of neat, typewritten words, scattered 
hectically between wide margins. 

In her high, clear, expressionless voice, Lou read: 

“Heart beats, futile . . . 

Immensity of anguish . . . 

Hot and appalling. . . . 

No release is apparent 

“To me . . * 

Where is my Lover, 

Wonder of eye-glance, 

Tremor of handclasp . . . 

Hurting . . . 

Burning . . . 

Chilling. ...” 

She paused for comment and returned the sheet to 
her pocket. Mary Rose gave herself a little shake 
as a puppy does when it emerges from the water. 

“Well,” asked the poet, anxiously. 

“It’s—interesting,” said Mary Rose, and for the 
life of her could not lift her tone from absolute flat¬ 
ness. “In a minute I shall laugh,” she told herself 
desperately. “Oh, poor child!” 

Lou looked disappointed but cheered up instantly. 


56 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“I suppose you wouldn’t understand/’ she said, “not 
having— felt. Rut”—she perked up her little head 
and thrust a curl out of her eyes, “after all, you 
work with another medium. By the way, how do 
you like your teacher—Mr. Dean, isn’t he called?” 

Ah! Mary Rose fathomed the real reason back of 
this unwonted visit. Poor Lou, always looking for 
a peg on which to hang her emotions. Tom was 
proving entirely too wooden a peg, guessed Mary 
Rose, correctly. 

“He’s splendid,” she said warmly, “a fine artist 
and a very nice person. He’ll be back soon and you 
must come up and sper^ the evening with us, Lou. 
I am sure you will like him.” 

Lou rose and shook out around her the limp, 
uneven hem of her art material dress. 

“I’d be glad to,” she said with a wholly Wellport 
intonation, “and now I must run along.” She turned, 
and lingered a moment. Mary Rose, with an ab¬ 
stracted friendly nod, had picked up her brush and 
was frowning darkly at her recent interrupted efforts. 
Lou hesitated. 

“I—I suppose you’ll see Tom, tonight,” she said. 
“He stopped in at the Kitchen today.” 

Mary Rose reflected. Yes, it was Tom’s night. 
She sighed. 

“If you see him-” 

Mary Rose turned, expectant. 

“Oh—never mind,” said Lou, and departed* 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


57 


But Mary Rose was a mind reader—when it came 
to a mind like that of Lou Perkins. As she her¬ 
self went home later in the afternoon, she was quite 
concerned about Lou. “I must get her married,” 
she said to herself, “not to Tom, that would never 
do; Tom needs fire, dash, flame—he’s so slow and 
sure and—and—pig-headed. Now Lou Perkins, 
down in her heart, is essentially a placid little per¬ 
son, sweet and domestic. What a cook and what a 
housekeeper! This poetry business is only—well, 
Lord knows what it is, but it’s surface stuff. When 
she gets a home and babies—What that girl needs 

is-” said Mary Rose solemnly, “is some man 

she can look up to and adore and in whom she can 
utterly submerge herself. Dust Pan indeed!” 

But dutifully she asked Tom that night. “Did 
you get a marked copy of last week’s Herald?” 

He pondered. “Oh—why, yes, I believe I did.” 

“And did you care for the verse?” 

“What verse?” 

“Idiot!” 

“What on earth do you mean, Mary Rose?” he 
inquired justly aggrieved. “I didn’t read any verse. 
You know I never read verse. Why should I?” 

“I’m sure I don’t know why you should,” she re¬ 
plied truthfully. “There’s certainly no law to com¬ 
pel it, thank heaven. But why did you think the 
copy had been sent you?” 

He was sincerely amazed. 



58 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Holstein,” he answered unintelligibly. 

“What?” 

Now he was really exasperated. 

“How slow you are,” he informed her. “Listen! 
I am about to buy a registered Holstein. A man in 
Southampton Village sells ’em. I suppose he was 
afraid that I wouldn’t see the paper, or that par¬ 
ticular item, and as he knew I was looking about he 
sent the sheet on instead of a letter.” 

Poor Lou! 

“He didn’t,” said Mary Rose, patiently. “Lou 
Perkins did. She had a poem in it. I think she 
wrote it to you.” 

As the night was oppressively sultry they had 
gone down to the beach and were sitting on a heap 
of driftwood, watching the full moon on the empty, 
lovely waters. Mary Rose could see him flush under 
his perpetual tan. 

“Don’t be silly,” he said crossly. 

“She’s—an awfully sweet girl,” said Mary Rose, 
rather against her own judgment. 

“Oh— hell!” 

Mary Rose jumped. She also got to her feet. 
Not by her own volition. Tom had grabbed—that 
was the only word for it—grabbed her by the shoul¬ 
ders and pulled her up to face him. He was very 
much taller. In order to look him sternly in the eye, 
which was what she desired to do, she was forced 
to crane her little neck. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


59 


“Look here. Forget that. I love you. But I’m 
getting a little tired of loving you/’ said Tom, “and 
I’m sick of hanging around like a lap dog. ‘Come 
here, Rover, here’s a bone’ one minute, and ‘Get out 
of my yard’ the next. I haven’t said one word about 
this painter chap all this month and you off with 
him day after day, God knows where. I’ve been 
very patient. But it’s got to stop! I’m telling you 
so! Do you hear me?” 

He was actually shaking her. Her brains felt 
rattly. It was hard to hear him, correctly. She 
couldn’t believe her little, burning ears. 

“Let me go!” 

He was sufficiently impressed by her tone to do 
so almost instantly. 

“Will you be good enough to inform me,” asked 
Mary Rose very courteously, yet shaking with rage, 
“by what right you speak to me so and-” 

She got no further. The tears were very near. 
Mary Rose was rarely what her mother called “good 
and mad,” but when she was her wrath usually found 
expression in tears, much to her disgust. “Wash 
rag!” she was now calling herself fiercely in the 
chaos of her mind. 

Tom was a little alarmed. But he was by nature 
extremely obstinate and sanguine. “You know I love 
you,” he began. 

“Well, what right does that give you?” she de¬ 
manded. 


60 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


He was startled and stammered a little. “Why, 
I thought that you—that we—that-” 

Her poise recovered, Mary Rose was relentless. 
“You thought what?” 

It came in a rush of indiscreet words. 

“I thought that—of course—we would be married 
some day. I know you haven’t said you would. But 
I was sure that you would—eventually. I—I have 
considered we were practically engaged,” said Tom, 
with wounded dignity. 

“Oh, you have? Well, reconsider it,” said Mary 
Rose. “We are not. We aren’t going to be, either. 
And just because you happen to love me,” she said 
unkindly, “doesn’t presuppose that I love you—or 
ever will. I’ve told you so a hundred million times; 
and I’m telling you so now. I hope you won’t make 
me repeat myself. The—engagement was all on your 
side and you must be fair to me and admit that I 
have never given you any cause to think that the 
arrangement was mutual.” 

Tom was sullen now. “Oh, very well,” he flung 
out, “I won’t ask you again.” 

“Pray, don’t,” said she sweetly, and turning, 
started for the house. But she hadn’t far to walk 
alone for he was beside her, his hand on her arm. 

“You didn’t mean it?” he asked anxiously, “you 
were just angry because I said too much. Perhaps 
I hadn’t any business to. This man Dean may be 
all right,” he conceded grudgingly. “I don’t know, 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


61 


I’ve met him only once or twice. He—he seems all 
right, I suppose. You didn’t mean it, Mary Rose.” 
“I did!” 

“Mary Rose—you’ll forgive me?” 

She had liked him a little better when he had 
stormed at her. She now experienced the contempt 
of the untouched heart for the heart that veers with 
love’s variable winds. 

“I suppose so. But please never speak like that 
again.” 

“I won’t!” he vowed eagerly. 

“And don’t tell me you love me any more,” she 
commanded severely. 

“I—couldn’t promise that,” he confessed. 

In her room that night, Mary Rose reviewed the 
eventful evening. 

“Darn Lou Perkins!” said Mary Rose ruefully, 
to the green eyes of Miranda, peering witchfully 
from her basket-bed, “and darn her old poem, too. 

And as for Tom—if he’s going to be like this- 

Well, I just won’t stand it another winter—fall— 
summer. I’ll go away or something. I’ll—I’ll ask 
John Dean what he thinks of my idea,” she con¬ 
cluded m a suddenly acquired burst of courage, 
“and I’ll resign from school. I will! Won’t I, 
Miranda?” 

“Meou!” agreed the Nonsense Cat, amiably. 



CHAPTER V 

On Dean’s next return from his colorful wander¬ 
ings, Mary Rose had Lou up to supper. It amused 
her very much to see the pretty play made by the 
poetess, with the aid of curls and pink cheeks and 
rounded blue eyes. Dean, an average male in the 
matters of sex, was flattered into displaying his 
sketches and small canvases, “little things, to be 
worked up,” as he modestly described them. Lou, 
who had been totally uninterested in all Mary Rose’s 
efforts along the line which was “not her medium,” 
showed an astonishing intelligence in grasping Dean’s 
rather technical comments on his own work. He had 
a very detached view of his efforts which amazed 
Mary Rose and for which she envied him. If one 
analyzed Lou’s intelligence, one found it to be 
merely the parroting of the speaker, accompanied by 
an expression one part comprehension and three 
parts admiration. Over her bent head in the be¬ 
coming lamplight, as she studied the sketches spread 
out on the living-room table, Dean flashed a look 
at Mary Rose—such a look—a melange of looks. It 
said: “I know this is all very foolish. I am well 
aware that this little girl doesn’t know a paint brush 
from a tooth brush. I am perfectly cognizant of the 
fact that an easel by the river’s brim, an easel is 
to her. But don’t laugh at me—I like it I” 

62 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


63 


And it was obvious that he did. For after Lou’s 
lean, eagle-faced, obviously clever father had driven 
out for her in the motor and the farewells had flutter- 
ingly been said, Dean, yawning, said to his pupil, 
“Sweet little thing, isn’t she? And a perfect figure 
out of a Marcus Stone era picture. I’d like to paint 
her sitting on a silk cushion and sewing a fine seam 
—strawberries and such nearby,” he added dreamily. 

But Mary Rose was not altogether deceived by 
his light tone. After all, to the artist, comprehension 
and enthusiasm are the breath of life. And Lou 
had looked so very pretty as she dispensed, Hebe- 
like, her vocal and expressional nectar and ambrosia. 

“That rather dishes Tom,” said Mary Rose to 
herself with a little malice. She thought it would be 
very good for Tom not to be certain—as she 
was sure he was—of a patient, undemanding wor¬ 
ship in the background. 

That Dean followed up his opportunities was quite 
evident to his pupil. Fudge and pecan rolls and 
little curious chocolate delicacies found their way 
so often to the Rogers’s table that Mary Rose sus¬ 
pected their boarder of having an interest in the 
Candy Kitchen, or in its principal. It must be 
explained here that Lou’s genius for serving sweets 
had found its outlet in the Candy Kitchen under the 
cloak of charity. The Perkinses were too “well-off,” 
and also too hidebound, to allow their only beloved 
offspring to labor for personal gain. Therefore the 


64 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Candy Kitchen earnings, over and above expenses, 
were donated to the various charitable purposes of 
the county—hospital funds, needy families and the 
like—and run by a committee of ladies selected 
from the churches and headed by the ministers, 
shepherds of the different flocks. All little Lou did 
was to devote so many hours a day to the concocting 
of delectables and to teach her “staff,” or committee 
of Wellport debutantes, to do likewise. Various girls 
took turns in selling and wrapping and there was 
one paid worker. 

Therefore Dean, if he was at all ashamed of his 
frequent stops at the attractive little shop and his fre¬ 
quent chats with a small cook who wore lace aprons 
around her waist and a dab of powdered sugar on 
her sky-tipped nose, could easily console himself 
with the happy thought that in the name of sweet 
charity much is overlooked. 

Meanwhile the lessons went on and Dean’s wan¬ 
derings grew less frequent. As September drew to a 
glorious close he found a number of reasons for 
staying at home as became a proper boarder. After 
all, how paintable the surroundings of The Place! 
He looked forward to the autumn there, in the woods 
and over the sumac-crimsoned hills and on the 
beach when the first frost would star the water’s 
edge with the delicacy of frozen foam. 

Meantime, Lou cultivated Mary Rose jealously 
and dashed off an appealing lyric to “one who does 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


65 


not dream,” all smocky and artistic and amazing. 
Mary Rose heard no more of the Dust Pan and its 
interested editor, for Lou had mentioned the gen¬ 
tleman once in John Dean’s hearing and that little 
man had briefly remarked, “I’ve met that blighter 
at one of the shindigs in the Village—a born grafter. 
He’s been kicked by more he-men than any other 
such noxious growth in all New York.” 

It was not until October with her own masterly 
methods of tinting had reddened tree and bush and 
brought to The Place the desire for popcorn and 
log fires and cider bowls, that Mary Rose ventured to 
confide in John Dean—to tell him her one ambition, 
her great idea that she dreamed was to bring comfort 
to many and, she hoped, a little fame to herself—- 
the only sort of fame she cared about. 

Her resignation from the school had not much agi¬ 
tated her parents. They were happy in her happiness 
and as her happiness seemed to lie in canvas and 
brush rather than blackboard and blue pencil they 
were well content to allow her, as she expressed it, “to 
be lazy for a season.” The fact that she taught at 
all had always been a thorn in their sides. She 
“didn’t have to,” they said—the old cry of the parent 
—and they were terribly afraid lest she develop into 
a real schoolma’am and perhaps long for wider fields 
of education to sow and furrow, and demand to be 
allowed to leave Wellport for a more intellectually 
flourishing town. So when during the summer she 


66 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


announced that she was through with the three R’s, 
they were unenlightened but placid. 

Having talked it all over with the Nonsense Cat 
and rehearsed her little speech to herself in many 
late watches in the chill, quiet nights, Mary Rose 
made the initial plunge. One frosty morning when 
earth showed a new washed face and the sun was 
a great golden globe in cloudless skies, Mary Rose 
announced at breakfast to the hungry boarder: 

“No lesson today. I have something to ask you. 
Shall we go for a walk?” 

“We shall,” he agreed heartily from the steaming 
depths of a blue bowl of oatmeal. 

They went. They took with them two of the dogs, 
nice setter beasts, which lived in the barn and came 
to the house at intervals, because they feared the 
advances, none too friendly, of the spoiled Miranda. 
With the red dogs at their heels, Dean and Mary 
Rose set out along the beach, up the gully and into 
the woods of oak and beech along the Osborne 
property. They talked very little at first, settling 
into a very comradely stride, for they had grown to 
be good friends and had long since passed the Mr. 
and Miss stage. The atmosphere of The Place 
was not conducive to such formalities. 

Reaching an attractive rail fence, Mary Rose 
swung her lithe self to the top, took an apple from 
her sweater pocket, acquired a reflective expression 
and chewed solemnly, her eyes on the gilded trees. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


67 


Dean, on the same rail, swung his feet and finally 
uttered the command, “Out with it!” 

“Well, it’s this way,” she said. “I have to ask you 
a question first. Answer truly. Can I paint?” 

“The ayes have it,” he answered her instantly. 
“Therefore, emphatically, my child, you can.” 

She looked into his face and observing his honest 
and affectionate blue gaze steadfast on hers, nodded 
her curly head a little. 

“Very well, O master. That question being dis¬ 
posed of, the next arises. What am I to do with 
it—with my painting?” 

He looked at her shrewdly. 

“There are any number of avenues open to you,” 
he remarked. “I can get you an exhibition, if that 
is what you are driving at.” 

“It isn’t and you know it. Listen. Even since I 
was a colt in pigtails and met that dear person, Henry 
Mann, I have had the cocoon of an idea. It has burst 
its shell at last and I’m going to tell you first of all, 
before I say anything to Mother or Dads, for if 
you think it impossible I shall give it up. It is-” 

She drew a long breath of the woodsy, brushwood- 
fire-scented air and went on, her eyes away from him, 
her brown hands tightly clasped in her lap. 

“I want to paint places—places people have loved. 
The house little Julia was born in, the house that 
Grandma lived in until she died, the old barn where 
Harry and Dick tumbled together in the hayloft, the 



68 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


green place beside some racing brown brook where 
Edgar asked Amy to marry him-” 

She paused and turned to Dean. He was regard¬ 
ing her with astonishment. His mouth hung open, 
his pipe clattered from rail to rail and finally landed 
on the ground. Fortunately it was cold. 

“ ‘Julia’? ‘Grandma’? ‘Harry’?” he began in such 
obvious bewilderment that she laughed outright. 

“I don’t blame you. Oh, can’t you see? Any¬ 
one’s Julia, anyone’s Grandma, anyone’s Dick and 
Harry and all the rest of them. I want to go into 
the business of painting memories! I want to help 
people keep sweet and fresh in their hearts the re¬ 
membrance of a place they have loved. Often, of 
course, that place is associated with a great joy, 
or even a sorrow, often associated with other people, 
perhaps dead now, perhaps living. Then sometimes 
it’s just a place—a little spot on the globe that means 
everything—a place where you have dreamed a great 
dream or found comfort just from the speaking trees 
or the kindly soil itself. Can’t you understand?” 

She was pleading with him, her tilted brown eyes 
shining like the waters of an autumn pool with the 
sun on them. A scarlet flush was on her smooth 
brown cheek and she leaned a little toward him. 
His own eyes flamed suddenly. 

“Why on earth I’m not madly in love with you, 
Mary Rose Rogers, heaven alone knows!” he said 
unexpectedly. 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


69 


She answered quite seriously, “Oh, because you 
like me too much, Master John—and you do under¬ 
stand ! ” 

There was a little thrill of clear triumph in her 
voice and John Dean nodded. 

“I understand. It’s—wonderful and whimsical 
and charming. It is wholly mad—and, by all that’s 
idiotic, I think you’ll put it through! What adven¬ 
tures you’ll have! What can you not do for people! 
Why, you little marvel, I envy you clear down to my 
toes. Only you must let me engineer this whole 
thing for you. We’ll plan a regular campaign, you 
and I. And listen to me, impractical creature, for 
this service you are going to charge whopping good 
prices and expenses. You understand that once and 
for all!” 

She looked at him startled, “I—hadn’t thought,” 
she said slowly. “I fancied there were some people 
who would want terribly just what I had to give 
them and that they wouldn’t be the sort who could 
pay a lot. I hadn’t thought of the money end of it.” 

He groaned, “Of course you didn’t think! As 
for the people who want your services and can’t 
pay much, well, every professional person has pet 
charities. You don’t have to be a doctor for that. 
You can do these odd jobs to your heart’s content 
as long as the rich and reckless pay well for what 
you accomplish for them. You are going to run 
intriguing advertisements in the magazines, and 


70 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


you’ll have to come to New York, I suppose, and 
take a studio and set out on your journeys from 
there. I suppose you realize that you’ll have to 
journey? Possibly to the far ends of this globe. 
What if you strike a homesick Englishman who 
wants a hedgerow in Cornwall painted? What if 
you interest some gentleman from Alaska who left 
a pet seal on a rock somewhere in whatever sea it 
is? Have you thought of that?” 

“Of course. And if I can once reconcile Mother 
and Father, the wilder the commissions, the stranger 
the places, the more I am going to adore it. But a 
studio in New York? I don’t like that so well, and 
they won’t either. I rather wanted to make The 
Place my first station and my last station—stay 
here in between times, you know.” 

He frowned, thoughtfully. 

“It might be managed. The preliminaries could 
all be done by letter. After all, some of the people 
who will want you won’t be New Yorkers. Terrible 
the way a New Yorker gets to feel there aren’t 
any human beings in the world except Manhattan 
Islanders! No, of course you won’t have to wait in 
town for the jobs to turn up. They can write you 
here. You can exchange references—that will be 
necessary—and you had best fit up a studio in that 
old barn of your father’s with the wonderful light 
and the picturesque surroundings. You needn’t 
make many changes in it—a window or so knocked 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


71 


out—or really paint in it. But you’ll need an office 
—a desk—a place to keep your traps, a place to 
see people and impress ’em in, if they should journey 
down here. Yep, I see it all, letters, references— 
that will be easy. You can give Henry Mann’s name 
and mine and I will attend to all the correspondence 
on that end of it; and you will demand bank refer¬ 
ences from prospective customers. The business 
arrangements will be fifty per cent of the price down 
when you accept the commission. If your work 
is not satisfactory you refund the sum, all save 
expenses. If it is satisfactory, they pay you the 
other fifty per cent and expenses when the picture 
is delivered. And wouldn’t I like to see that! You’ll 
be able to deliver some in person, some you’ll have 
to send. Oh, it will be fun. It will be ‘Mary Rose 
and Co.’ I’m the ‘Co.’-” 

She looked at him soberly. “All right, although 
your arrangement of payment seems piratical. I 
tell you what. If you’ll help me with the reference 
end and advice and all that and be general factotum 
and guide, philosopher and friend—why won’t you 
really be the ‘Co.’? We could be partners. You’d 
be the never-silent one, you know, and I would do 
the traveling. ‘Drummer in Memories.’ How is 
that? Will you go into partnership? Papers and 
everything? ‘Mary Rose, Inc.’ or something of the 
sort? And draw a percentage?” 

She was so anxious, so anxious! He looked at 



72 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


her and then struck his hand down on the fence. “I 
will! Partners, Mary Rose!” 

A moment later as he saw the quick tears tremble 
in her eyes, he said cheerfully, “This rail fence is 
picturesque and all that, but I am wearing through. 
Let’s go! ” 

They slipped from their perch and whistled to the 
red dogs which came back from foraging in the 
brush, leaping and barking around them, and the 
new firm set out, hand in hand, as children do, 
friendly and unsentimental, through the woods and 
across the fields toward home. 

On the way, Dean said a little shyly, “I’ve a 
commission for you right off. Go up to Davendale 
and paint that old well for me—and the kitchen door. 
If you could paint the smell of cookies, I’d be 
very well pleased, only until the firm gets on its 
feet, you’ll have to do it cheap. Better wait until 
we’ve reaped enough shekels from the R. and R. to 
do it, I suppose!” 

“I’ll do it for love,” she told him blithely, “and 
moreover, there shall be a cooky down in the corner 
that no one but you will be able to discover.” 

“ Tor love,’ ” he told her soberly. “That’s an 
awfully nice idea. And if you really meant it, Mary 
Rose, and if,” he added laughing, “I wanted you to 
mean it—that way—how happy we two would be!” 

She smiled at him out of a very deep affection. 

“There’s love—and love-” she said, “and I’m 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


73 


thinking you don’t have to put capital letters to it 
to have it awfully satisfactory. Speaking of— 
almost everything—did you have a good time at 
Lou’s last night?” 

He flushed a bit but laughed as he answered, 
“Matchmaker! Yes, I did. She’s a restful creature. 
I am the most unrestful one myself. It’s nice to be 
in that lamp-and-cushion atmosphere.” 

Mary Rose made no comment but a minute later 
as Five Chimneys came into sight she asked him, 
“Tell me—or don’t if you’d rather not—were you 
ever really in love, John?” 

He answered promptly, lightly, but with a little 
crease between his heavy, dark brows. “Have I not 
been? Half a hundred times—with the turn of an 
eyelash, the line of an ankle, the tone of a voice 
and the remembrance of a dream—half a hundred 
times with these, partner, and—once with a girl.” 

He was so far away from her all of a sudden. She 
asked softly, in the hushed voice that will not break 
in too rudely upon a meditation, “And what was 
she like?” 

“Like? Oh, like nothing on earth. I was eighteen. 
I had known her all my life, up in Davendale. She 
was a year older. Just a girl, a great, tall, gracious 
girl, with braids of honey-colored hair and the color¬ 
ing of a May orchard. Not far from that well there’s 
a tree, an oak. There are initials on it, J. D. and 
M. C., you might paint that too. No, don’t!” 


74 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“What happened?” asked Mary Rose and her 
heart ached a little. 

“Nothing really. Just what always does. Prom¬ 
ises and parting. She was the daughter, of course, 
of the minister and I a poor farmer’s son. No money 
anywhere and I was ambitious. Won that scholar¬ 
ship I told you about—went to Paris—she didn’t 
wait—Paris, and a studio! What her father must 
have said to her to make her write that stiff, brutal 
little letter—well—after that, I didn’t wait, either.” 

He was silent a minute and then said, “She mar¬ 
ried—someone—I don’t know—a man who came up 
there one summer. That’s all.” 

Mary Rose gave the hand she still held a little 
squeeze and he burst out. 

“Don’t be sorry! All those years ago! I wouldn’t 
know her if I fell over her in the street. Fat, 
doubtless, and all that. I wouldn’t want her if I 
could have her now as she was then, pink and cream 
with that long yellow hair and the figure of an 
adolescent goddess. But she spoiled me for other 
women. I have been too afraid of them. God!” 
he said suddenly, “I was happy in Paris, in that 
sticky little nest up under the roofs, painting like 
mad, writing her such letters—wild, longing letters, 
—happy because I was accomplishing something 
for her. And when her note came—it was spring, I 
remember. I remember the haze over the roofs 
and the chestnuts and the smell of the old, wicked 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


75 


Seine—I remember standing on that bridge—I was 
only one and twenty and very desperate. After that 
there was a girl and a little laughter and then, well, 
I was a fool.” 

They had reached the house. Mary Rose was a 
little saddened, a little excited. As they came to 
the door she said, abruptly, “Partner, you’ll have to 
break it to them!” 

He was himself again, the rotund little man with 
the child-clear eyes and the likable face. He waved 
his hand in a large gesture. “Leave it to me!” he 
said. 


CHAPTER VI 


Leaving it to John Dean was a stroke of genius on 
the part of the trembling Mary Rose. The parental 
Rogers were requested to go into session after sup¬ 
per that evening. Their exuberant boarder arranged 
them solemnly around the oak table in the cheerful 
living-room which was curiously attractive in spite 
of, or perhaps because of, its haphazard mixture of 
good, bad and indifferent furniture. The lamp, with 
the red-glass shade, cast rosy lights upon the eager 
and expectant face of Mary Rose who faced her 
family with the guilty look of a very small, trusting 
culprit. Dean produced a notebook, and announced, 
“This is a conference. If you once get the point 
of view of a conference, once become accustomed 
to it, you will want ’em often.” 

Mrs. Rogers, sewing on some bit of finery for her 
daughter, looked up smiling, and her husband, his 
long legs at ease, stretched out in his shabby morris 
chair and blew clouds of grey smoke from his cigar. 

“What’s on your mind, Dean,” he asked, “and 
what is on Mary Rose’s conscience?” 

He flashed a quick look at his wife as he ques¬ 
tioned. It wasn’t possible—he hadn’t noticed any 
sentiment between the two. Yet they had been 
thrown together all summer! He wished painfully 
he had dreamed of such a possibility earlier. He 
76 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


77 


hoped—oh, he hoped not! To lose Mary Rose! It 
was unthinkable! Yet he liked Dean—a nice, clean 
fellow. 

Dean was speaking. Cleverly, he drew a little 
picture of Mary Rose’s plan. He himself was so 
enthusiastic about it that he was able to plead his 
“partner’s” cause from his heart, and to stir the 
hearts and imaginations of his listeners by his own 
obvious sincerity. The two elder people glanced 
from one implorant to the other. How young they 
were! How glowing! Mr. Rogers sighed, partly 
with relief and partly with a certain unacknowledged 
melancholy. 

“Well, Mother?” he asked. 

Mrs. Rogers set a row of careful, fine stitches in 
the organdie collar before she answered, “It—seems 
like a pretty idea, David.” 

“Oh! ” began Mary Rose. 

But her father interrupted, a sudden cloud on 
his pleasant face. “I don’t much like the idea of the 
girl gallivanting all over the country.” 

Mary Rose knew the day was won for her. His 
tone was doubtful, but relenting—the tone of a 
parent who drags out, “Well—we’ll see—” and yet 
leaves no doubt in the mind of the eager youngster 
who listens that the longed-for party is as good as 
attended. 

“There won’t be very much gallivanting,” she 
said, “and after all, Dads, I can take care of myself. 


78 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


You know that. I just couldn’t bear another year 
of school-teaching—and you’d hate to have me in 
a studio in New York or something like that. Think 
of the fun I’ll have this way. Think of all I can see 
and do and learn. Oh, please be happy and say you 
won’t mind!” 

They didn’t say that. But her mother gave her 
a little half-tearful smile and Mary Rose jumped up 
from the hassock on which she had been curled, 
spilled the indignant Miranda-Cat from her com¬ 
fortable lap and, going to her mother, kissed the soft, 
faintly scented cheek. 

“Nothing for the old man?” asked David. 

For an answer she plumped herself on his knees 
and rubbed her face against his, nuzzling him as 
a puppy does. 

“Lots! You dears!” 

“And now,” said the silently observant, highly 
gratified boarder, “let’s get down to brass tacks—all 
of us. The conclave is in session—meeting in order 

and all that sort of thing. Plenty of time for 
this mutual-admiration society afterwards, but there 
are a number of things we must discuss. Ladies! 
Gentleman! Miranda! ” 

It was late when the conference adjourned and 
the members sought their respective beds; but much 
had been settled in the intervening hours, the slid¬ 
ing scale of prices, for instance. “You can’t possibly 
value everyone’s memories at the same rate,” Mary 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


79 


Rose had insisted. But Dean had finally convinced 
her that it would be better to set her prices accord¬ 
ing to the financial standing of the prospective 
customers rather than in harmony with the appraise¬ 
ment each set upon his own particular, to-be-immor- 
talized memory. 

“After all,” orated the boarder, “how in Sam 
Hill are you going to know that Ganseschmalz, the 
packer, isn’t going to value the portrait of his first 
porker-pen as much as Larry Malone, the ward- 
heeler, the speaking likeness of the peat bog in 
which he was raised?” 

So the sliding scale was fixed, the figures causing 
Mary Rose to gasp somewhat and inquire timidly if 
her conferees really thought even her best work 
worth all that. 

David and Dean discussed the renovation of the 
barn and Mary Rose and her mother its decora¬ 
tions. Secondhand typewriters were disposed of, 
even filing cabinets came under weighty consider¬ 
ation. Mr. Rogers “allowed” that his Wellport 
office could be robbed of some very useful fittings 
for the cause. Finally, amid a great deal of laughter, 
pencil chewing and seriousness, the great advertise¬ 
ment was written and entrusted to the man of 
business who was so lavish with offers of aid from 
stenographers and the like. 

Work on the barn started almost at once. The 
station wagon brought over a desk and chair, an 


80 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


old cabinet and a workable typewriter from Well- 
port. The attic was overhauled and in the process 
a number of studioish things came to light—rush- 
bottomed chairs, a fine table or two, an old couch 
whereon Mary Rose might rest if she so desired. 

The advertisement appeared in due form and 
due time in the smarter of the smart magazines, in 
quite large and striking type standing out amid 
all the little “classified” notices of gift shops and 
tea rooms and hand-made jewelry and shoes. 

MARY ROSE 
Painter of Memories 
Have you loved and lost a garden? Is there 
a particular old house back home which you 
tenderly remember? Wouldn’t you love a pic¬ 
ture of the very spot where she said, “Yes”? 
How about the bit of campus that was particu¬ 
larly dear to you? 

Mary Rose will paint them for you.—Write 
to her. 

Followed the post-office box number and address. 
“They’ll write,” said the boarder, confidently, “and 
then come references—and meetings if any. You’ll 
have a mail as large as a senator’s.” 

He himself was forced to return to town, having 
his own work to do and his new venture of pupils. 
“So glad you broke me in,” he told Mary Rose 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


81 


gratefully, “but you’ll always be your uncle Dean’s 
star scholar, you know.” 

She missed him so much when he went and had a 
smile of comprehension for the red and blue eyes 
which presided over the Candy Kitchen. Yet little 
Miss Perkins was not altogether disconsolate. There 
still remained the useful cousin in Tenth Street and 
the possibility of long visits; and Mr. Dean had 
promised to “show her New York.” 

On his final call at her home he had given her the 
little deft sketch he had made of her in the summer 
fields, gold with black-eyed Susans and butter and 
eggs, and had promised, “You’ll surely let me know 
when you come up? I’ll show you the sights—the 
Village, the zoo and the aquarium. They are distant 
only in miles, I assure you!” 

Meanwhile, Mary Rose had not so much time to 
miss her companion for the letters were coming in, 
oodles of them—some laughable, some pathetic, 
some indignant, some suspiciously looking for a 
“catch” somewhere. Others were quite impossible 
and full of levity, while still others were as serious 
as Mary Rose herself. 

She answered three. The first, typewritten on very 
imposing office stationery was signed, rather sprawl- 
ingly, by a name which was famous the world over. 
Mary Rose opened her eyes very wide as she read. 
The man who wrote to her, via a confidential secre¬ 
tary, was one whose meteoric rise from raucous news- 


82 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


boy to newspaper owner was heralded wherever 
people perused print, still in his fifties, enormously 
rich and very charitable—the famous, the hated, the 
beloved, Amos Brent. 

“New York City, October 24. 

Mary Rose, 

Dear Madam: 

Having read your advertisement in the current 
issue of Foibles , I am writing to ask you if you 
would undertake a commission for me. I am in 
possession of a small farm in New York State and 
would like very much to have a painting of the house 
which still exists. If you could arrange to do this 
work for me in the spring, I would be gratified. I 
would specify the apple-blossom season. You could 
live in the house and be quite comfortable as I have 
permanent and elderly caretakers in charge. 

If you could arrange to see me in my office, I 
would be very glad. The favor of a reply is re¬ 
quested. 

Yours very truly, 

Amos Brent.” 

The second letter was as follows: 

“Scarsdale, New York, October 23. 

Mary Rose, 

Dear Miss Mary Rose: 

Your whimsical advertisement has just come to 
my attention, and I hasten to assure you that I have 
a garden which I would very much like to have 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


83 


painted. It is a garden that blooms in winter for it 
is in the South. If you would consider it, I would 
be very happy to have you as my guest there during 
the month of January, providing of course, you can 
put up with the vagaries of an old lady. I would 
be glad to motor out to see you and arrange the 
details with you, if you will be so kind as to indicate 
your desire in the matter. 

Yours very sincerely, 

Sally Fairfax.” 

The third letter completely took her breath. 

“New York, October 24. 

Mary Rose: 

I have seen your advertisement and it has a great 
appeal to me. I have a hundred memories that I 
want painted! But lest that sound too large an 
order for a little lady—I am sure you are a little 
lady—suppose we start with one of them. 

Up in the Adirondacks I have a hunting lodge. 
For many reasons it is most dear to me. As I grow 
to know you better I shall tell you why. I would 
like it painted in a setting of snow and trees and 
storm. Or can’t you paint elements? 

The trouble is that I must remain strictly incog¬ 
nito. I enclose a slip of paper, the reprint of an 
editorial which recently graced a New York news¬ 
paper, which may, in some measure, explain to you 


84 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


the whys and wherefores of my desire to hide my 
light under a bushel. The name which I have 
adopted for my Arabian Nights existence is, in a 
measure, my own, for it once adorned a dim an¬ 
cestor. Of course I could have you execute this 
commission for me under my rightful cognomen but 
whimsies should be met with whimsies and I think 
you will understand; that is, you’ll understand ^f 
you are really what I think you are and not just 
a clever girl—or boy—or perhaps a whole company 
of them, trying to put a new one over on a jaded 
world. 

It won’t be as hard to do business with me as you 
believe. The bank on whose letterhead I write will 
vouch for me under any name. You will be able to 
spend a rather pleasant month—I suggest Decem¬ 
ber—in Little Lodge. There are caretakers there, 
but I warn you, close-mouthed or they wouldn’t be 
there at all. 

Write me at the bank and let’s see just how 
adventurous a Mary Rose person you are. 

Faithfully yours, 

Jabez Jones/’ 

The enclosed reprint referred to in this amazing 
epistle was briefly the statement by the editorial 
light who had written it that, as was well known to 
all the writing and art world, Jabez Jones was the 
pen name, so to speak, of a well-known city business 
man who, under the bushel of his curious, self- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


85 


chosen appellation, hid the light of great and tender 
charities. “How many an unknown poet,” enthused 
the editor, “has been overwhelmed by a gracious 
letter and a truly cashable check from this amazing 
man—and not poets only, but workers and doers in 
all branches of art and business. Great statesmen 
have had such letters, great engineers, as well as 
poor women struggling to support their families; 
talented girls and boys have been helped to an edu¬ 
cation by him, and all incognito. I, myself, who have 
met him, can vouch for his reality, but I do not 
know his real name, nor do I wish to. The gifts he 
makes are extraordinary: books, theater tickets, 
money, an order on a tailor; and always there is a 
letter, sometimes, to those who need no help, just 
the letter, but always encouraging, always apprecia¬ 
tive. Many have sought to unmask this rare per¬ 
sonality. I hope that none succeed, for with their 
success this unique charity would cease.” 

“I can’t make head or tail to that!” said Mary 
Rose aloud. “But, whoever he is, mad or sane, I like 
him!” 

She sent all three letters to her erstwhile boarder 
with an appeal for advice. Other letters she saved 
to show him later. 

Dean arrived by the next train, quite without 
warning. It so happened that Mr. Rogers was at 
the station to get some freight and saw him as he 
alighted. 

“What’s happened?” 


86 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Business!” panted the little man. “Mary Rose 
has sent me a wild collection of mail. Where is 
she?” 

“In the barn—studio, I mean.” 

Dean climbed into the station wagon and they 
rattled off through roads made mysterious and burn¬ 
ing by the great drifts of leaves. “There’s been a 
high wind,” Rogers explained to his unexpected 
visitor. 

Dean stopped at the big house long enough to 
leave his over-night bag and hug Mrs. Rogers to 
her great contentment and then dashed off to the 
barn. He found his partner at her desk which was 
piled high with papers, her curly head sunk in the 
palm of one hand as she pondered. Miranda was 
in her lap. 

“Hey!” 

She jumped up, her face alight. “Oh! How dear 
of you! You’ve had my letter?” 

“That and the enclosures. Why two special de¬ 
livery stamps?” 

“Wouldn’t it go twice as fast?” she asked him 
demurely. 

He swung her hands in his. 

“Business is booming. I see you are dated up 
for December, January and early spring. Gimme a 
seat and we’ll talk it over.” 

She indicated a chair. Dean eyed it dubiously. 
“Too frail,” he murmured, “for this too, too solid 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


87 


flesh.” He sat down on the sofa and drawing her 
letter from his pocket motioned her to the space 
beside him. 

“Brent first. You won’t need any references for 
him. He’s as rich as mud—the old skinflint. Who 
would have thought it! He’ll want your references, 
all right, all right. Leave that part to me. Just 
refer him to one John Dean and Henry Mann and 
a few others we will cook up. Briefly, I am flabber¬ 
gasted. The man is hated as the hardest critter in 
New York. A picnic egg, dug up as a relic of some 
festivity of the Stone Age. People who know him 
intimately—and there are not many—like him im¬ 
mensely and people who read his rabid newspapers 
adore him. Everyone else wishes he were dead or 
something less restful. I’ll never recover from that 
shock. Now, why should he read the classified ads 
in Foibles ? Take the job, my dear, and double the 
price. If he’s satisfied he’ll make you! Apple 
blossoms! I would be just as amazed to see the 
Statue of Liberty walk off her pedestal and take a 
nice, cool swim in the river!” 

“I wonder why,” said Mary Rose thoughtfully. 

“Lord knows. New York State isn’t even his own. 
He wasn’t born in that beblossomed farmhouse; he 
did not drink at the tender age of six months from 
the old oaken bucket. He was a newsboy in the 
London slums and came over here when he was about 
fourteen. He’s been everywhere and seen every- 


88 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


thing. He was a reporter on a paper that after¬ 
wards became his own. Well-” 

He turned to the next letter. “I like this Sally 
woman. She must be crazy, the reckless old thing, 
inviting a perfect stranger to spend a month with her 
in the South. Doesn’t even specify which part of 
it. Anyway, we’ll ask very politely for her social 
and bank references. I am inclined to think they’ll 
be all right; then we’ll have her trip down in this 
motor of hers and if you like her, you can have a 
trip past the Mason and Dixon Line. Very soft, I 
should say, and it will appeal to you after a few 
weeks in the Adirondack woods.” 

“Isn’t that Jabez Jones letter amazing!” 

“Didn’t amaze me. I’ve heard of him. I had a 
letter from him when I exhibited—he liked a picture. 
He wrote me charmingly and sent me ari even 
charminger check. You’re going to like that job 
awfully.” 

She drew a deep breath. “I like it all, already. 
And now, if you’ll help me answer these three, and 
look over some of the others?” 

She had divided the remaining sheep from the 
goats. Dean read the piled letters carefully and put 
several aside. 

“Some of these are short jobs,” he said. “Well, 
your time will be filled from next month to summer 
—three big jobs, so to speak, and as many little 
ones. Sit down here at the desk, partner, and get 
busy!” 


CHAPTER VII 


Letters were answered, references exchanged, 
people looked up. Dean’s report on Miss Fairfax 
was enthusiastic and unbelieving. 

“She doesn’t sound real. Yes, I went to her bank 
as she told us to—financially very sound and all 
that—spinster, of course, about fifty-six. I struck 
the very attractive woman at the bank who seems 
to have the job of cutting coupons for rich and idle 
old ladies and all that sort of thing. She opened 
up after awhile and informed me that ‘Miss Sally,’ 
as everyone seems to call her, is an eccentric and, 
according to her, ‘adorable’ person, with a mind of 
her own and given to all sorts of whimsicalities. 
Better write her, Mary Rose, and make the appoint¬ 
ment, she seems set on seeing you in your own sur¬ 
roundings.” 

The letter was written but before the specified day 
Mary Rose went to town and bearded Amos Brent 
in his den—a very large, mahogany-fitted den. 

She encountered item, one office-female at a desk; 
item, one elderly gentleman, position nebulous; item, 
one secretary; item, another secretary and finally, a 
little exhausted at the questionnaires she was forced 
to answer, she arrived in the presence. 

He sat behind a mammoth, flat-topped desk and 
looked at her over half-portion glasses, a big man, 
89 


90 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


heavy in the jowls, with a pair of very keen grey 
eyes, a thick, resolute mouth, a stumpy nose. His 
skin was amazingly pink and white, his grey hair 
thick and with the suspicion of a wave. He smiled 
at her as she was ushered in, turning her modest 
card in his short fingers. He had dimples, two of 
them! These so amazed his caller that she nearly 
fell over a footstool and subsided, thereafter, a little 
embarrassed, into a large easy chair which stood by 
the desk, and to which he waved her. 

“So,” said Mr. Brent, pleasantly, “you are Mary 
Rose? I had expected an older woman.” 

She said something, nothing that mattered, and 
presently laid before him the two or three little 
sketches she had brought up to town with her. 
This was following Dean’s advice. 

“Business man, you see,” Dean had sagely re¬ 
marked. “Better take along some samples, partner.” 

He just glanced at them, however, and looked up at 
her immediately. “If you are willing to go up to Wat- 
ville,” he said, “in the spring, as I suggested, I would 
be very glad to have you undertake this little com¬ 
mission for me. I’d like the house painted, or rather 
the south porch. You’ll find it rather attractive. 
There’s an orchard, a stone’s throw away.” 

Mary Rose told him she would be delighted and 
in a moment heard herself naming a figure that 
burned her tongue as she uttered it. 

He nodded, “Very fair. Then, before you leave, 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


91 


half the price, as I understand it. Expenses arranged 
later. Is that it?” 

She understood that the interview was at an end. 
She rose to go; a little dazzled with the suddenness 
of it all. He went to the door, shook hands with her 
in a rather abstracted fashion, “Then—I’ll see you 
in May.” 

And that was all—not quite. Leaving the office 
she ran into, literally, a very tall slender woman, a 
woman with black hair under a small hat, and a 
long throat swathed in sables against a cutting 
November wind. This personage accepted her stam¬ 
mered apology with intolerance and reviewed her 
involuntary assailant with one indifferent, yet appar¬ 
ently all-seeing glance of hard black eyes. Mary 
Rose stared back, a trifle spirited, at the studied 
insolence of the look. She observed, during the 
fleeting moment in which the two women mustered 
one another, that the older woman’s perfectly and 
delicately painted face was set in lines of dissatis¬ 
faction and that her full red mouth, oversmall and 
tight, was the mouth of an unhappy person. Mary 
Rose hummed her way to the elevator. She was 
content with her lot and a little sorry for Amos 
Brent, for she heard, as the office door opened, an 
obsequious voice remark, “Why yes, Mrs. Brent— 
alone—this way, please.” 

As she emerged into the raw air, she saw a small 
English car of the town-coup6 type at the curb, a 


92 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


luxurious car, with orchids in a silver flower holder, 
a sleek, grey car upholstered in mulberry, with a 
chauffeur and a footman in mulberry liveries on 
the box. She caught a glimpse of silver fox rugs 
and other fittings and said to herself profoundly, 
“And he wants me to paint a farm-house in spring !” 

She told Dean, on their next meeting—he was a 
regular week-ender at The Place—of her interview. 

“His wife?—Oh, yes, a very social person,” Dean 
said. “Was a school teacher or something; no one 
seems to know. Very much the grande dame now. 
Disapproves of her husband—everyone knows that . 
No, no children.” 

She was sorrier than ever for Amos Brent. 

December came in mild and sunny with pale blue 
skies and the smoke of Five Chimneys rising straight 
into fresh, sweet air. Miss Sally Fairfax chose a day 
more golden blue than December had any right to 
produce, and came down to Wellport in her stately 
motor and stayed for midday dinner. Before she 
left, not only Mary Rose but Mr. and Mrs. Rogers 
and Miranda—and Dean, who insisted on being 
present, were at her small feet, for she was a dear 
and no mistake—Small, with white waved hair and 
the dearest little heart-shaped face, brown twinkly 
eyes and a voice with a drawl in it. 

Greetings over, she settled herself for a “long talk” 
with Mary Rose and shooed everyone else out of the 
room. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


93 


“I’m going to take you to South Carolina/’ she 
said, “just outside of Aiken. You’re going to love it. 
There’s an old brick house there which belongs to 

me, I was born in it, and a garden-” her voice 

softened. “Not much of a garden in January per¬ 
haps,” she admitted, “although I told you so in my 
letter, but garden enough for me, and I have a fancy 
to have it painted. I like you. You are just what I 
thought you would be; and I think you’ll be happy 
at Boxwood. I shall be, I know, for I am very fond 
of young people.” 

As for the third letter, there was no way, of course, 
in which to meet or hunt down Jabez Jones, but 
Mary Rose wrote him and had a letter in reply. In 
part it said: 

“The financial end of this business will all be at¬ 
tended to through my bank. I advise that you let 
your partner, as you call him, do that end of it—so 
tedious. I remember John Dean. I wrote him once 
and had such a jolly little answer. I am glad he is 
to be the third in our little game. And you—on the 
first day of next week—you will kindly be at the 
station. I enclose tickets and a time-table and 
directions. Don’t fail me.” 

“Monday!” said Mary Rose thoughtfully to her 
father, “I wonder if that’s a good day on which to 
start out on an adventure?” 

David was not quite in agreement with this “ad¬ 
venture” but, looking at the eager eyes and the glow- 



94 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


ing cheeks of his girl-child, he was unable to produce 
any more of the arguments which had employed 
most of his “restful” evenings of late. He laughed 
and told her, “Why not? Better than Friday, any¬ 
way.” 

The night before she left for Little Lodge, Tom 
Osborne presented himself at the door. She had not 
seen him in weeks. Since their unfortunate “moon¬ 
light misunderstanding,” he had come only once to 
Five Chimneys, and that time had departed in 
short order, for he chanced on a visit of Dean’s and 
overheard, sitting in a corner, drawing sulkily on a 
pipe, all the plans for Mary Rose Inc. They 
pleased him not at all. Dean, anxious to conciliate 
this great, silent creature whose presence filled the 
room with an atmosphere of chill disapproval, had 
asked him blithely, “Well, Osborne, what do you 
think of our little scheme to take fame by the fore¬ 
lock?” 

Osborne had answered, bluntly, “Damn nonsense! ” 

“That’s that!” murmured the irrepressible Dean 
with a look of comic dismay at the unperturbed 
Mary Rose. 

Later, appreciating to some extent the mental tur¬ 
bulence of the farmer, Dean gracefully withdrew and 
left Tom and Mary Rose alone. She took him to 
task without an instant’s delay. “Tom! You are 
absolutely too rude to be allowed out among decent 
people. You’re—a goop!” she finished, rather feebly 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


95 


and then had to stifle the flame of her indignation 
under the blanket of wholesome laughter. For 
Tom’s expression was for all the world like that of 
a small boy who has “ sassedl” the teacher and 
doesn’t care. Her mirth in no way smoothed his 
ruffled plumage. 

“ ‘Rude’?” he asked, with a sudden deadly cour¬ 
tesy which in no way belonged to him, and which sat 
upon his large frame strangely. He even raised an 
eyebrow in the approved movie-hero fashion. Mary 
Rose regarded him with another burst of helpless 
laughter. 

“Very. Swearin’ and everything. What right 
have you to make fun of my little plans? If my 
family says it’s all right I don’t have to account to 
anyone else, do I?” 

Her conscience misgave her a little as she spoke. 
She knew that the family was by no means recon¬ 
ciled. It was merely patient and doggedly neutral. 

“Your family doesn’t think any more of it than 
I do,” said Tom, “and if your father had any sense 
at all, he’d put a stop to the whole business. It’s too 
silly for words, and dangerous—traveling all around 
the country by yourself, going to strange places and 
meeting strange people. I never heard anything like 
it in my life. It’s a pity you get your own way as 
you do. Some day you’ll get it once too often. I 
knew the minute I laid eyes on him that that rattle¬ 
brained painter would-” 


96 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“You leave him out of this!” commanded Mary 
Rose, suddenly. “It’s my own plan. He’s only in¬ 
terested and friendly and helpful, which is more than 
you’d ever be.” 

“Is that so?” 

At the end of half an hour they were where they 
had started, and Mary Rose, rising from her deep 
chair, put the finishing touches to an unprofitable 
evening. 

“Until you can be a little more amiable and less— 
less pugnacious, Tom, I don’t think you’d better 
come up any more. We just get angry and all that, 
and it’s hateful.” 

She was quite close to tears. It hurt her to hurt 
Tom; she felt that it wasn’t her fault. They seemed 
born antagonists; but it was not Mary Roseish to 
harbor grudges and she was so fond of Tom. 

Had he been a mind reader or, even better, a stu¬ 
dent of women, he would have seized that moment— 
the moment in which she softened to him, in which all 
the memories of their mutual past rose up to assail 
her, all the good days, all the good times, all the 
happy, unclouded affection which had seemed, for¬ 
merly, to thrive on their small differences of opinion 
which were less that than radical dissimilarities of 
temperament. But he was neither mind reader nor 
student. Truly, in his case, love had made him 
blind. And so the clash of wills, which might have 
ended in laughter, given, on his part, the little sym- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


97 


pathy, the sincere apology which would have caused 
Mary Rose, the generous, to meet him more than half 
way, closed in alienation. Tom made a stiff fare¬ 
well. She had not seen him again until the even¬ 
ing of her departure. 

Alas! That one cannot gauge the mental ther¬ 
mometer of the beloved! On this Sunday Tom 
arrived, sick and sorry, and determined to make up. 
He had had time to think things over. He was 
ashamed and repentant, a state of emotion foreign 
to him, one which made him most uncomfortable. 
Too, he had sought solace, instinctively, at the 
Candy Kitchen, but found Louise too immersed in 
thoughts engendered by the fleeting visits of Mr. 
Dean to pay much attention to him. Tom felt him¬ 
self much abused, and quite ready to call quits. 

But Mary Rose, also, had had time to think things 
over and her heart was hardened. Likewise, Tom 
arrived just when she was in the throes of packing. 
He brought candy with him as a peace offering. 
She took it, gazed upon it as if it had been a wooden 
horse in disguise, laid it aside, folded her hands in 
her lap and said, “How nice of you to come, but I’m 
leaving tomorrow and I’m awfully busy.” 

So, as Dean had once remarked, that was that. 
Tom was an inarticulate person at best. In ten 
minutes he had gone, walking down the road under 
a cold, cloudless sky and emitting harsh words 
which were quite lost upon the chill, quiet air. 


98 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Meantime, Mary Rose had not been idle. All 
arrangements had been made and she had written 
Jabez Jones to the effect that if her commission took 
longer than she expected, she would have to come 
home for Christmas and return. His letter, as she 
packed, was before her and she regarded it affec¬ 
tionately. What a nice person he was! How she 
would like to know him! Such an understanding 
creature—not quite real, but part of the white magic 
which seemed to surround her nowadays. 

“Of course you shall come home for Christmas, 
little Mary Rose! And hang up your stocking and 
listen for the sound of reindeer on the roof. I some¬ 
times think you are nothing but a baby—and not a 
painter at all. How can I be sure that you won’t 
come back from Little Lodge with half a dozen im¬ 
pressions worked out in colored paper. By the way, 
there s a sled in the barn, several of them, and skates 

if they fit. I advise you to take more than one 
vacation from your work and come home to Well- 
port with the rosiest cheeks the fortunate inhabitants 
have ever seen. 

You ask me just what I want painted. You’ll 
know when you get there. Do you think you can 
manage painting out of doors? There’s a view over 
the hill and the lake that I want, and perhaps one 
interior—the stone fireplace that your old Jabez built 
with his own hands, for he is old. You guessed that, 
didn’t you? A young man could not have written 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


99 


you as I have—or loved you quite as much, you 
quaint little stranger!” 

So he was old! She didn’t believe it; she couldn’t 
and she refused to. It wasn’t a matter of years; this 
man was young, younger than herself. 

She knelt down by her window sill and looked out 
over the frosted fields. Fingers of ice had written 
mystic spells and runes on her pane. December had 
come in as warm as autumn but in a few short days 
had thrown off her disguise. As yet there had been 
no snow, but the stark trees threw black shadows 
and the stars were a running river of silver. She 
heard the Sound, restless, fretting at the dark rocks 
and resolved to get up very, very early, and before 
the train took her away, walk once more on the yel¬ 
low beach where there would be a crust of ice—gold, 
gold in the early sunshine, crackling under her boots. 

“What a happy world!” said Mary Rose. 

Farewells were made. Her mother and father bore 
themselves as Stoics, only, Mrs. Rogers said, a trifle 
tremulously, “It seems mad , somehow, to let you go 
off like this.” 

“Too late,” sang Mary Rose, engulfing her in an 
embrace. “Too late for second thoughts!” 

“You’ll write every day?” 

“And wire when you reach there?” added Mr. 
Rogers. 

“Parents, dear two, I shall, I will!” 

In New York she had several hours to kill before 


100 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


the afternoon train was ready. Dean and Mr. Mann 
met her, took her to lunch, to an exhibition, to an 
early tea and all of them talked sixteen to the dozen. 

They accompanied her to the station, saw to her 
^camp-trunk and her bags, viewed her tickets nar¬ 
rowly lest something had gone wrong, and finally 
escorted her to the magazine stand where Jabez had 
bidden her wait, twenty minutes before train time. 

“Wait for what?” Mann inquired reasonably. 

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’s changed his mind 
and come to see for himself what I’m like and why.” 

“Not him!” said Dean with ungrammarish em¬ 
phasis. “He’s a sly bird. Many have sought to 
catch him, but he is too clever for them. He may be 
here, to be sure, but he won’t come up to speak to 
you.” 

Mary Rose sighed, smiled and laughed. She had 
hoped, a little. 

A porter appeared, an elderly creature with grey 
wool under his red-banded cap. In his hands he 
bore various packages, and with them, somehow, 
managed gracefully to salute Mary Rose. 

“Miss Rogers?” 

She admitted it. 

“Compliments of Mr. Jones,” said the porter, de¬ 
livering his burdens, “and I’m to see you on the 
train.” 

There were a florist’s purple box, another square, 
heavy box done up in white paper and tied with 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


101 


silver cord, a bulky yellow bundle and a letter. 

She untied the string of the purple box and dis¬ 
closed great single violets, wet surely with some 
celestial dew. With a gasp she fastened them to her 
little fur-trimmed jacket. The other packages and 
the letter were marked, “for the train.” 

“What a nice man!” She said it very clearly and 
as she did so a tall man in a heavy ulster, who was 
passing, turned and looked in the direction of the 
voice. She had a glimpse of him, a lean brown face, 
curious deep-set eyes, a laughing mouth. It seemed 
to her his look held recognition. For one moment 
she wondered if that were Jabez. She laughed to 
herself at the idea, but Dean had said he might be 
lurking in the crowd. 

Dean, meantime, had possessed himself of the 
packages, the new porter had taken the bags from 
another porter and had himself consoled his less 
fortunate confrere with silver, and they were walk¬ 
ing to the train. 

Dean weighed the square package, thoughtfully, 
in his hand. “The plot thickens!” said he in an 
audible aside to Mann and Mann laughed. 

“Jabez Jones!” said Mann. “How he sets his 
mark on time and places people. I’d like to know 
him.” 

It was a trip of nearly twenty-four hours. Mary 
Rose found a drawing-room waiting for her and a 
very attentive Pullman conductor and porter. The 


102 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


two painters saw her comfortably settled and then 
endeavored to settle with the station porter. But 
that individual smiled cheerfully, “No suh, no suh. 
Orders from Mr. Jones. I’ve been taken care of.” 

“A miracle!” said Dean in an awed tone and then 
asked curiously, “Did you see Mr. Jones himself?” 

The porter made round eyes and flashed white 
teeth, “Dunno, sir. Young genman came here this 
mornin’ and found me waitin’ round.” 

“But you must often have seen him if he travels” 
began Dean, when the whistle blew and with hasty 
farewells her escorts departed and Mary Rose was 
left alone, to depart, a little breathless, on the first 
lap of her magic adventures. 


CHAPTER VIII 


First of all Mary Rose explored her drawing¬ 
room. She loved it, from the little green hammock 
to the long green couch. She had never traveled 
over night—this in itself was an adventure. She 
washed the city dust from her face and hands, 
took off her hat, and with slow fingers, childishly 
prolonging the moment, opened expectantly her 
packages. 

The heavy, square one, once it was free of papers, 
proved to be of tin, painted and charming, and con¬ 
tained all manner of strange little goodies—bonbons 
and ginger, cookies, stuffed dates—and a card which 
read, “Jabez thinks you may get hungry in the 
night I” 

She bit reflectively into a piece of ginger and with 
it burning pleasantly on her tongue, opened the 
yellow bundle. There were three books, two slim 
ones of verse and a novel she had long wanted to 
read, and another card, typed, as were all his com¬ 
munications, and it read, “Jabez thinks perhaps the 
trip may bore you!” She laughed outright at that 
and turned to her letter. 

“Dear Mary Rose: 

Now that you are started on your journey, are 
you a little frightened? Don’t be. I shall be so 
103 


104 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


happy to think of you in my Little Lodge with 
Nancy and Sam to look after you and my old dog, 
Red, to lie at your feet in the firelight. By the 
time you get this, I shall have seen you. You didn’t 
think that you could go off without being under 
observance, did you? But you shan’t have seen me, 
for Jabez is an adept at dark disguise and sneaky 
ways! Now aren’t you curious? 

Write me and tell me how you like the place I 
built at a time when things looked pretty black 
and in which I was won back to sanity and cheerful¬ 
ness again. You will probably meet my next door 
neighbor; he’s an odd person, and has a number of 
strange ideas, but I think you’ll like him. He gen¬ 
erally takes a vacation this time of year and I have 
told him to keep an eye on you. But don’t try and 
find me out through him for he is woman-wile-proof 
and will rigidly guard my secret, as will Nancy and 
Sam. You didn’t think you were the first stranger 
to occupy the Little Lodge, did you? Oh, Mary 
Rose, how vain of you! There have been many— 
all sizes and types—a little shopgirl with bad lungs, 
a missionary back from India with dreadful mem¬ 
ories to overcome (that was in summer, he would 
be frozen stiff at this season, poor beggar), a young 
actor who had had a very miserable time of it, a 
group of boys from my pet settlement—oh, any 
number of nice people—and now you! 

Bless you, my dear. I am personally never bored 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


105 


with this wonderful thing called life. I am always 
interested in the next corner and turn it eagerly 
enough, so I can’t truthfully say that your little 
advertisement lightened up any cheerless hours. It 
didn’t. It just added to my general contentment 
with the scheme of things. I had you well looked 
up before I wrote; there are ways and means, you 
know, and I wasn’t going to let myself in for any 
contract with some mercenary firm of people who 
had grabbed at a catch-word (as this is an age of 
catch-words), and who would have proved dull and 
uninspiring. I’m too wary an old bird to be caught 
with tinsel. When I discovered that there was no 
tinsel, but solid gold, I was a very happy person, 
therefore, bless you. Be a little pleased with my 
hidden mountain nest and don’t look the gift horse 
too closely in the mouth. 

Faithfully, 

Jabez Jones.” 

This letter was food for considerable thought. 
She turned from it to the novel and from the novel 
to the poems. One volume was dedicated, she saw, 
“To Jabez Jones, who makes dear dreams come 
true.” It was by a woman and Mary Rose sniffed 
a little. She had begun to feel that Jabez, mystery 
and all, was all her own. 

She took a little writing pad from her bag and 
scrawled three notes, one to her mother, one to 
Dean and one to Jabez. The latter said, merely: 


106 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Thank you and thank you. You are a very 
thoughtful mystery, and I’m loving the trip and 
all that goes with it and am certain to become 
enamored of the Lodge. 

Who is that horrid woman who dedicates poems 
to you? I never heard of her before and don’t 
want to again! 

Seriously, accept my gratitude for the beautiful 
flowers and the books and the eatments, but you 
must not be so lavish, this is a business proposition 
—and, after all, I may not give satisfaction! 

Y ours-on-a-venture, 

Mary Rose Rogers.” 

She stamped and sealed her letters, gave them to 
the porter and then returned to the novel. 

She went into the diner late, a little embarrassed 
at this new routine. There were very few people 
in it: a mother and a small girl, an elderly man, two 
young women. Mary Rose ordered and ate in 
leisure, watching the black landscape tear by, occu¬ 
pied with balancing a coffee cup and admiring the 
wonderful ways of waiters with laden trays on a 
lurching roadbed. 

Coming out of the diner she passed the smoker. 
A voice smote suddenly on her ears, a pleasant deep 
voice, and glancing in, quite involuntarily, she saw 
the man of the station. With a sensation that she 
should be surprised but was not, she went back to 
her drawing-room. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


107 


It was made up for the night. The porter was 
putting the expert finishing touches to his handi¬ 
work. She looked with approval at the reading light 
over the lower berth. She would never be able to 
sleep; not with her mind in such a tumult of excite¬ 
ment and conjecture. 

She looked at her watch. It was only a little after 
eight. To the sympathetic and hovering porter, with 
whom by now she had become great friends, she 
complained, “But, Henry, I’ll never be able to 
sleep I” 

He looked worried. “It is early, Miss. Perhaps 
you’d like the observation-car platform,” he sug¬ 
gested, “if you all wrap up very warm.” 

No sooner said than done. She seized her heavy 
coat and settled her little hat firmly around her ears 
and followed where he directed her, through the 
swaying train to the platform of the observation car. 
Henry accompanied her with a campstool. It was a 
perfectly clear night, very cold, and there was snow 
upon the fields. Mary Rose sighed with satisfaction 
and sunk her hands in the big sleeves of her coat. 
This was wonderful! 

She had not been alone long when the door opened, 
a tall dark figure emerged and the red glow of a 
cigarette appeared, quite too remarkably high up in 
the air. A very pleasant and courteous voice ad¬ 
dressed her. “Do I disturb you?” 

Mary Rose said, “Oh, no,” quite eagerly and then 


108 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


bethought herself of all the warnings she had re¬ 
ceived. Never, never speak to strange men while 
traveling! She therefore repeated, “Oh, no,” in a 
tone as frigid as she could make it. 

“Thank you.” 

The man sat himself down the small distance 
of the platform from her. She felt ill at ease. 
It was too stupid sitting there and not saying any¬ 
thing. She saw the glow of the cigarette as it hurtled 
through the air and fell on the tracks and saw, too, 
as he struck a match to light another, shielding it 
with his hands, who the intruder was. She turned 
her eyes away hastily, but she was glad that it hadn't 
proved to be someone else. 

Quite abruptly a low chuckle sounded out of the 
darkness. “Forgive me and tell me so if you don't 
like it. But you see, I know you; you're Mary 
Rose and I'm Carter, Bob Carter, your going-to-be- 
neighbor.” 

She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes shining 
in the dark. “Mr. Carter—the neighbor of whom 
Mr. Jones-” 

“Jabez,” he interrupted. “Yes, I’m he. He put 
you in my care, by the way—rather a one-sided 
arrangement, as you didn’t know about it.” 

But she was now interested. She immediately 
forgot all the warning conveyed in the letter she had 
so recently read and begged eagerly, “Oh, Mr. 
Carter, tell me about him!” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


109 


“But that’s forbidden!” he said in mock rebuke. 

“I shan’t ask leading questions,” she urged him, 
“not names or dates or anything like that. I just 
want to know a little bit about what he is like.” 

Mr. Carter drew his chair nearer hers and braced 
his legs against the railing. 

“Well, let me see,” he began slowly. “He’s very 
small, has a slight hump; his eyes are crossed and 
he is dark complexioned.” 

“I don’t believe it!” 

Ignoring her, he went on quite calmly, “He is 
immensely rich. Got it blackbirding one hundred 
and six years ago. He lives alone in Greenwich 
Village with six cats and two parrots. They speak 
only Spanish. His favorite foods are eggs and 
chocolate creams; his favorite flower, the dande¬ 
lion; his favorite drink, gin and milk. His hobbies 
are painting, punting and panting. He drives a 
Ford and rides a Percheron. He is quite a normal 
person really, Miss Rogers.” 

Mary Rose sighed, helplessly. “What a champion 
you are! How attractive he sounds! I shan’t ask 
any more,” she vowed, woefully. 

Bob Carter laughed outright. “Then I’ll tell you 
—if you’ve reached that stage of resignation. Jabez 
Jones, as he must be known among us, is—a man. 
That’s about all I can say of him. He is average 
big and average rich and average everything. I have 
known him all my life and he’s always been a good 


110 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


friend to me. You wouldn’t want me to give him 
away. I was with him when he started this little 
incognito of his and if you knew the fun he derived 
from it you wouldn’t pry—no one would.” 

“That’s better,” said Mary Rose, “but still, I’m 
not so sure—about the average part, I mean. Two 
questions only, please: Is he old and is he married?” 

“Both,” answered her listener solemnly, “very 
old and most decidedly married. Now aren’t you 
mad?” 

She wasn’t, but she was disappointed. However, 
she gave herself a little shake and thought, “It 
doesn’t have to be true!” 

Carter went on talking, a little about Jones, more 
about the Lodge to which she was going. “I’m next 
door—two miles or more, that is, but I’ve been com¬ 
missioned to show you around, so you’ll have to 
put up with me or you might offend your employer.” 

Mary Rose didn’t like that much; it put her little 
back up. However, she managed to say, quite cor¬ 
dially, “I’ll be delighted.” 

“Not in that tone of voice,” said her listener 
laughing, “but if you don’t want me around, all you 
have to do is to say so.” 

A little later he remarked, “You can’t ask all 
the questions. Tell me how you happened to hit 
on this particular profession, and all about your¬ 
self.” 

He was so calm and so friendly that she couldn’t 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


111 


resent his curiosity and knew that it was pardon¬ 
able. She told him, with pauses for laughter, some¬ 
thing of her life, much of her dream. He nodded; 
she saw that by the stars and the glow of the 
cigarette. 

“Jabez thought it was something of the kind. 
You two are a pair,” he murmured. “You match 
perfectly.” 

“ ‘Average old—and average everything/ ” quoted 
Mary Rose at him a little spitefully. 

Carter chuckled. “Certainly. How you pick up 
words.” 

A little later they parted. Mary Rose was sud¬ 
denly overcome with an unconquerable desire for 
sleep. She confessed this, frankly yawning. 

“It’s the air,” explained her sage companion, “you 
won’t be able to keep your eyes open for days; 
you’ll paint with them shut.” 

He took her down the now quiet train between 
the rows of swaying green curtains and left her at 
her door. 

“I’ll see you at breakfast. Your porter will call 
you and all that. Dress warmly. We’ve a ride 
ahead of us when we land which won’t be until 
after luncheon.” 

As he left her he grinned small-boyishly, “Sweet 
dreams—of Jabez.” 

She undressed and braided her hair, crawled into 
her berth and, with not a glance at the novels or the 


112 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


poems, switched out the lights. She was sleepy but 

very thoughtful, “Could he possibly be-? But of 

course not, he’s not nice enough. And yet-?” 

She hoped he was. In a second breath she prayed 
that he was not. On a third, as contradictory, she 
fell suddenly asleep and dreamed fitfully through the 
night, waking at intervals to hear the engine; to 
listen to the wheels and the creaking of the car; 
to draw back the shade and look out into an im¬ 
penetrable darkness; to see again the lights of a 
little station; to feel the train pause, shudder, stop 
and then rush on. She slept, in reality, very little 
and her dreams were insane—humpbacked men with 
voices like Tom Osborne’s; a parrot with John 
Dean’s face above gaudy feathers; and Jabez Jones, 
the very image of Bob Carter, sauntering toward 
her between rose-blooming hedges and talking 
volubly about her in unintelligible Spanish. 


CHAPTER IX 


“Almost there, 

Dear Jabez Jones” wrote Mary Rose. 

“I have just had breakfast with your neighbor, 
Mr. Carter! Such a nice breakfast and need I add 
such a nice neighbor? I am wondering if I am not 
getting a better time out of this adventure than 
was specified in our bargain. Perhaps you should 
charge me instead. Who knows? At all events 
we reach our station shortly after lunch and then 
I shall write again.” 

Bob Carter had been nice at breakfast, but he 
had also been fatherly and somewhat taken Mary 
Rose to task for what he called her “hit or miss” 
gambler’s tendencies. 

“After all,” he argued, “what do you know about 
Jabez Jones? That he writes a pleasant letter and 
has a solid bank account—sum total, nothing of im¬ 
portance. As it so happens, I can reassure you, if 
you desire reassurance, which you don’t, that he 
is a perfectly trustworthy person, as trustworthy as 
I, myself. But what do you know about me? 
Nothing, save what Jabez Jones has told you— 
and Bob Carter. Vicious circle, isn’t it? Then— 
Amos Brent? And Miss Sally? Two strangers. 
Miss Rogers, you are either a very brave young 
woman or slightly mad.” 

113 


114 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Mary Rose dug a spoon into her grapefruit. 

“Ouch!” said the paternal Mr. Carter, his napkin 
to one eye. 

“So sorry,” said she insincerely. 

He twinkled at her across the little table. “Mad?” 

“N-no.” 

“Think I haven’t the right to advise or warn you? 
Well, I haven’t. I am a very impertinent young 
man, as you will find out for yourself before long, if 
you haven’t done so already. But that only goes 
to prove what I have said already—that you know 
nothing about me.” 

Mary Rose flushed. “As far as that goes what 
do you or Mr. Jones or any of my ‘employers’ know 
about me?” she countered. “For all you may guess, 
I may be a veritable adventuress and wholly in¬ 
capable of even whitewashing a fence, let alone 
painting a landscape!” 

Carter laughed, his attractive eyes crinkled with 
mirth and his lean, tanned face alight. 

“Never. I go by instinct on such matters.” 

“I, too,” said Mary Rose demurely. 

There was a little silence while the smiling stew¬ 
ard cleared away the dishes and brought in rolls and 
coffee and bacon and eggs. 

Mary Rose, her butter knife poised over the 
crisp brown circlet, said suddenly, “Listen. You’ll 
think me very foolish, but I’m ever so serious about 
this little adventure of mine, painting memories, I 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


115 


mean. I think all sorts of things about it; it seems 
to me such a happy thing to do. And as for people— 
strangers and all that—why, they aren’t strangers 
any more, are they, when they have allowed me to 
glimpse, even ever so little, their dearest secrets; 
allowed me to walk where, in memory, their feet 
must often reverently tread? It can’t be just a 
whim with them, and it isn’t one with me. And, 
Mr. Carter, I—-I care awfully about trusting people, 
just believing in them, you know. I’d rather be dis¬ 
appointed ninety times out of ninety-one just to have 
proven to me that one time I was right, than to dis¬ 
trust everyone and go all my life suspicious and 
unhappy. I think suspicious people are the unhap- 
piest people on earth—people who suspect motives 
and are always asking ‘why?’ Can’t they just take 
the pleasant things for granted? It seems so easy. 
Now I know I shall love Little Lodge and my 
work there and Mr. Jabez Jones. I know it and I 
refuse to be disillusioned.” 

For a moment she had forgotten her own vague 
suspicions, romantic as they were, as to the identity 
of her companion. She was reminded of them by 
the sudden curious little twist to his mouth and the 
laughter in his eyes as he said, soberly, “Shall I 
tell Jabez that?” 

Her heart gave a small leap, but her own eyes and 
mouth were perfectly controlled as she answered, 
“Why not? Such a nice old man.” 


116 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Carter drew his brows together in a mock effort 
at concentration. “Did I give you that impression 
or did he? Dear me, how reprehensible of both of 
us. Not so very old, you know.” 

Later, as they stood on the platform of the 
observation car together, enjoying the cold sweep 
of the air, he glanced at Mary Rose as she stood 
beside him, heavily gloved hands on the brass rail, 
her little nose just appearing pinkly from the great 
fur collar of her coat. 

“You have,” he said gently, and as if continuing 
a conversation interrupted only a moment before, 
“a very beautiful philosophy. I envy you.” 

The train stopped only a moment at the small sta¬ 
tion of Fortune where they were to get off, and Mary 
Rose found waiting for them both a dilapidated but 
sturdy station wagon which made her feel at home 
at once, with many rugs for warmth and even a sort 
of metal hot-water bottle for her feet. This mechani¬ 
cal steed was guided by a lanky creature, with 
plentiful grey hair falling over his raccoon collar and 
a raccoon cap pulled down over shrewd black eyes. 
He touched the cap to Mary Rose and greeted Mr. 
Carter with a toothless smile and “Howdy, Mr. 
Bob.” 

“Never better, Sam. This is Miss Rogers—you 
must take good care of her. How is Nancy, and 
how is Red?” 

“Nancy’s fine,” said Sam as he helped his lady 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


117 


passenger in, “and Red is finer still. Getting old 
both of them, but still going strong.” 

The car started off with a wheeze and a rattle 
and Mary Rose from the depths of her furs asked, 
“How far is it?” 

Carter, bending to tuck in the rugs more closely 
about her feet, answered cheerfully, “Upward of 
fourteen miles.” 

She gave a gasp, half astonishment, half delight, 
and leaned back to watch the windings of the nar¬ 
row road ahead, a road thickly bordered with pines 
and spruce, a beautiful road, climbing higher and 
higher. 

They spoke very little during the drive. It was 
evident to her that her companion loved it as one 
loves familiar things, for his eyes rested on it with 
such quiet joy and, she thought, gratitude. 

Once she saw deer, beautiful slim things, in the 
distance and more than once rabbits scuttled from 
the underbrush across the road. The fields were 
sheets of ivory and the trees wore little capes of 
ermine; the air was frosty wine and the sky a lovely, 
delicate blue. Mary Rose was happy; places, 
weather—these made her happy always. Given 
beauty of nature and splendid air in her young 
lungs and she asked for nothing more satisfying. 
The going was slow, and she was able to catch 
glimpses of water, little lost blue lakes lying in the 
curve of the hills, and as the short winter day closed 


118 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


down and a single star shone in the as yet un¬ 
veiled heavens, it seemed to her, cold and hungry 
as she admitted herself to be, that this fourteen-mile 
drive was a highway straight to heaven. 

She was sleepy, too, and had half dozed off when 
she heard Carter’s voice, “Here we are. I wish we 
might have arrived by full daylight.” 

Little Lodge, in the midst of pines and tall 
cedars, stood on the crest of a very high place. 
At its feet a great sheet of water was spread out 
under the shining silver of the stars; from its many 
windows glowed the warm gold of lamplight. Mary 
Rose stumbled to the ground, stiff and still half 
awake. Carter, his arm through hers, led her up 
broad steps made of logs in at the open front door. 

“I’ll stay to see you settled,” he told her. 

It was a home-coming; she knew it for such. 
There was fat Nancy at the door, a smile all over 
her good face, like jam on wholesome bread. There 
was the old red setter jumping about her heels, and 
there the great living and dining room of the lodge, 
raftered and rough, with the fireplace big enough 
to accommodate a team of horses. The fireplace 
itself was of native grey stone. On the stone floor 
were rugs and skins, and the chairs and tables and 
bookcases were homemade affairs of wood, unstained 
and unvarnished but rubbed with loving hands until 
they shone like satin. 

“Oh! How wonderful!” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


119 


She saw Carter look about as if he, too, thought 
it so. He only laughed a little, however, and 
answered practically, “It will seem more wonderful 
still when you’ve been allowed a rest and time to 
get warm and an early supper. How about it, 
Nancy?” 

Nancy nodded. “If you’ll come this way, Miss.” 

Mary Rose followed her. She heard Carter talk¬ 
ing to the dog and the dog answering him; she heard 
Sam’s slow, deep voice. 

From the kitchen quarters came a cheerful clatter 
of dishes and a most marvelous smell. Mary Rose 
sniffed longingly. 

“I’m—hungry,” she confided. 

“So you would be, Miss. Now here’s your room. 
There are only two bedrooms in this little wing. 
Sam and me, and our boy Rast, has rooms out by the 
kitchen. Here’s a little bathroom.” 

“Bathroom and electric lights!” said Mary Rose, 
dazed with such grandeur. 

“Mr. Jones likes comfort, when he’s here,” said 
Nancy, “and we have our own lighting plant.” 

The bedroom was small, but had three windows 
which overlooked a bed of the seven-mile-long lake. 
The smell of pines was in the room, which was fur¬ 
nished with a comfortable cot-couch, an easy chair, 
a straight chair and a little dressing table. The 
windows were chintz-curtained; no pictures inter¬ 
rupted the rough beauty of the log walls; there were 


120 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


gay rugs on the floor, Navajo blankets on the bed, 
and the small bathroom was, if not tiled, at least 
spotless and shining, shower and all. 

Mary Rose sat down on the bed. “I never want to 
go away!” she said, greedily. 

Rast, the boy, came in with her bags and the 
information that he’d fetch in the trunk later. He 
developed as a six footer, about two and twenty, 
a happy blend of his father and mother. 

After Nancy had left her, Mary Rose changed into 
a warm, woolen dress and low shoes, washed and 
combed and, too eager to perform a more thorough 
toilet, slipped out into the great room where supper 
was already laid. She looked about for Carter, but 
he was not there. Only Nancy was visible, busy with 
some small logs at the fire. 

“Mr. Carter’s respects, Miss,” said Nancy, “and 
he’ll be over in the morning.” 

Mary Rose was much annoyed at the quick feeling 
of disappointment which now assailed her. 

“Does he live nearby?” she asked casually, one 
small foot on the hearth stones. 

“Yes, Miss. He bought a little piece of land off 
Mr. Jones and has a cabin on it. It’s on the shore 
—right on the lake.” 

“I suppose he and Mr. Jones are great friends?” 

Nancy’s open, ruddy face was masked suddenly. 
She was, all at once, the perfect and discreet servant 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


121 


as she arose, dusted off her fat hands and folded them 
under her apron. 

“Yes, Miss. Shall I serve supper?” 

Mary Rose could have shouted aloud her joy in 
her. Even if she were to be so mean as to try 
to cajole Nancy into a solving of the mystery, she 
knew that failure would stare her in the face. But 
she had no intention of trying very hard to plumb 
the depths of Jabez Jones’s incognito. It was all a 
part of her wonderful adventure, a part of her own 
special magic. Still, she wondered. 

Supper consisted of venison steak broiled to per¬ 
fection, potatoes French fried to the queen’s taste, 
home-glassed beans, coffee and marvelous preserves, 
with home-made bread and cottage cheese. Mary 
Rose thought that never in her life had food tasted 
so unlike food and so much like ambrosia. She said 
as much to Nancy who, moving deftly about the 
table for all her weight, smiled and admitted her 
own superiority. 

“Mr. Jones likes good food,” said Nancy, as if 
that settled it. 

After supper Mary Rose spent an hour or two 
getting settled and acclimated—reading at random, 
trying to write home—“Pshaw! I wired from the 
station. I’ll write tomorrow”—and fighting the in¬ 
clination to sleep. It was a losing battle from the 
start. After a time she called Nancy and between 


122 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


yawns announced her intention of going to bed. 

“Fm so ashamed—it must be as early as early— 
but honest to goodness, I can’t hold my eyelids open. 
I feel as if they had a ton of lead on them.” 

“It’s always that way when you first come,” said 
Nancy. “After a while you’ll get used to it.” 

Mary Rose went to her little room and in twenty 
minutes she was rolled up in her blankets with the 
icy, pine-scented air blowing through the open win¬ 
dows, her cheeks as rosy as a good healthy baby’s 
and her sleep as deep and happy and dreamless. 


CHAPTER X 


Such days—frosted blue and silver, the white, 
delicate strength of the snow patterned with the 
shadows of the pines! Mary Rose went to bed every 
night certain that the next day could never, never be 
as beautiful as the one just ended and woke each 
morning to a conviction that the day just dawning 
was the most perfect she had as yet experienced in 
Little Lodge. 

She knew what she was to paint without being told. 
Not far from the house a great clump of trees hung 
over the rise above the lake. A clearing had been 
made, a straight path, a “cathedral aisle” she had 
named it to herself on that first morning. One set 
up an easel at the very beginning of it and looked 
away and down through the passage bordered in 
living green, carpeted in ermine and giving on the 
blue beauty of the lake that had as yet not frozen 
over. To be sure, there was ice on the shore, ice 
half way out, but then the deep cold blue of the water 
and far, far across the blurred softness of more pines. 

Wrapped up to her ears, a heavy fur cap pulled 
down over them, rugs over her knickerbockered 
knees, she sketched and sketched. Of course her 
hands almost congealed, but what of that? One 
could always rise, stiff, “set like a jelly,” she said, 
and race away over the fields and scramble down the 
123 


124 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


little cliff and come back again, warm and glowing. 
The noon hour was warm enough anyway. Mary 
Rose had made half a dozen sketches before she was 
ready to really work. On that night she wrote to 
Jabez Jones: “I think I really have what you want 
—in my heart, I mean. If only I could put it on can¬ 
vas. What a wonderful week, what wonderful days 
you have given me!” 

When his answer came it was curious. It con¬ 
sisted of five words written on a sheet of yellow 
paper and in pencil. They read, “Do you like Bob 
Carter?” 

She did not answer this; she could not. Of course 
she liked Bob Carter. Who wouldn’t? But—if she 
were only sure who Bob Carter really was! She 
saw him every day, most often in the morning and 
sometimes in the afternoon at the tea hour, for 
Nancy always had tea by the fire for them. Even 
when Carter did not come Mary Rose noted, with 
a lift of the brow, that there were always more 
sandwiches, more scones, more jammy muffins than 
any sane person would suppose one woman, no mat¬ 
ter how hungry, could possibly eat. They had 
grown good friends, but always with that barrier be¬ 
tween them, for no matter how freely he talked to 
her on subjects in general and herself in particular, 
she never heard anything of him in return save the 
merest scraps. She learned that his college had been 
Yale, that he had been in France back in the dark 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


125 


ages— “Of course you don’t remember the war, at 
your age,” he had teased her; that he knew Europe 
well and not only from the standpoint or rather 
march-point of the A. E. F. Beyond this she knew 
nothing. 

Was he Jabez Jones? She puzzled more and more 
and when the letter from Jabez himself came with 
the so pertinent question, she was astounded to find 
herself a little afraid, for she liked Bob Carter but 
—she loved Jabez. She loved the idea of him, the 
ideals of him, his letters, the typewritten letters and 
specially the one letter with five words in it scrawled 
in a not unusual hand in smudgy soft lead. She loved 
the mystery he made of himself and the things she 
had heard of him. He couldn’t be Bob. Bob was 
too young. Hadn’t Dean had a letter from Jabez 
ages ago? 

She heard from Dean, she heard from Mann, she 
heard, frantically, resignedly, protestingly from her 
parents. Even Lou had written, but not Tom. 
Of all her little, closest circle, Tom alone was silent. 

Two days after the letter that went unanswered, 
there came a wire. It was signed “Jabez” and read 
“Do you?” She pondered on this. What possessed 
the man? There must be a reason—although it 
occurred to her that Mr. Jones was not exactly, 
according to modern standards, a reasoning person. 
She would not answer; she could not. How undig¬ 
nified and silly! 


126 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She finally sent a wire down by Sam. “Very 
much.” 

His letter reached her shortly after, the very 
day the picture was finished and she had started on 
the pen and ink of the fireplace corner in the big 
room. 

“Dear little person: How prying you must think 
me; but I am not really. You see I know from your 
letters and the glimpse I had of you and from Bob 
and Sam and Nancy—for you are surrounded by 
spies, such friendly spies, my dear, that you are the 
one being who can help me in my trouble. It is Bob, 
of course. I have known him so long and so well. 
Too well and too long to judge him very fairly, I am 
afraid. I can tell you just this about him; he is to 
be trusted, he tries to play the game, and he needs— 
liking. Long ago—well, not so long ago—he came 
a very bad cropper. He was quite young and not 
very well amoured. It hurt—damnably. Perhaps 
he will tell you about it; I can’t. It put into his 
heart a great fear of women and a great fear of 
friendship. I think you are the one to heal him. 
Don’t be frightened. Think of me, if you will, 
as of a sentimental old man who wants to see the 
sun shine for every one. You yourself are such a 
friendly, sunny little soul! Help Bob, if you can, 
and me.” 

Well, she had known there must be something, 
known it from the shadow in back of the deep-set 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


127 


grey eyes, the line of the laughing mouth when it for¬ 
got to laugh. 

That night, breaking an unspoken rule, Carter 
came over. He had business to transact with Sam, 
he said, and it was plainly not an excuse, for he dis¬ 
appeared into the kitchen almost directly he had 
arrived and was gone a long time. When he came 
out he started to walk through the big room almost 
as if he did not know that Mary Rose was curled in 
a deep chair by the fire toasting her tired feet. She 
spoke to him as he passed and he turned with a little 
start and came toward her. 

“How’s the work?” 

“Almost finished. I think I can plan to leave 
early the morning of the twenty-fourth, perhaps the 
night of the twenty-third—day after tomorrow— 
and be home for Christmas as I promised.” 

He looked at the finished canvas and held the 
pen-and-ink drawings of the fireplace corner in his 
hands. He nodded. “Jabez will be pleased,” was 
all he said but she was quite content. 

He stayed a minute or so, talking idly enough, 
and just as he was leaving stooped to put another log 
on the rapacious fire. As he did so, a letter fell 
from his pocket, the inside pocket of his mackinaw. 
Mary Rose had quick eyes, no matter how quick his 
recovering hands. Her own letter to Jabez—one 
of the first she had written him from home—and not 
re-addressed to “Mr. Carter” or anything like that. 


128 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She said nothing. Carter, apparently unaware 
that she had seen, said good night and left her and 
she sat for a long time staring into the fire, watch¬ 
ing the surrender of its vivid little life and searching 
in leaping flame and charring ash as if she could 
read the answer there. Jabez could have sent it 
to him, of course. She was very troubled that night. 

The following day dawned, not gold and blue, 
but grey and heavy with threats. Before breakfast 
the first idle flakes of snow had whirled down, al¬ 
most aimlessly, falling with a slurring sound against 
the windows so lightly that Mary Rose, busy with 
her interior sketches, half forgot it was snowing. 

By noon, however, Sam was going in and out with 
a grave face and Nancy was muttering in her kitchen 
and thanking her Creator that the storeroom was well 
stocked. By tea time the drifts were deep, a wind 
had risen and the pines gave before it. The whole 
world was a blur of white and grey. There was no 
horizon, no lake, no distant glimpse of water. Mary 
Rose, bundled up to her nose, tried to venture out 
against Nancy’s shouted advice, but got not one step 
further than the door. Later there was a stamping 
and a calling outside and Carter came in, looking 
the incarnate snow man. 

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she greeted him eagerly. 
“Of course I have seen snow before—it does snow 
on Long Island—-but never anything like this.” 

“You’ll see all you want of it,” he told her grimly, 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


129 


getting rid of his outer things, which promptly 
dripped and steamed, “for if I am not very far off, 
this is a four-day storm and after that it will be 
another few days before we can get to the station. 
This is marooning.” 

She gasped. “Then I won’t get home for Christ¬ 
mas?” she asked and at the thought of the disap¬ 
pointment at Five Chimneys, her mouth went down 
at the corners and her lips trembled a little. 

“I’m afraid not.” 

Mary Rose was in a panic. “But—my family? 
They’ll be out of their minds with worry!” 

“Not quite,” he said briefly. “I got down to the 
station today—this morning before things were bad 
—and brought up some provisions and things and 
took the liberty of wiring your parents and explain¬ 
ing the situation to them.” 

“Oh, thank you,” she said, really relieved and then, 
for she was a clear-thinking person, “but if you got 
down, I could have gone, too, and made a train.” 

His eyes were candid enough, meeting hers as he 
said, “No. The only morning train is very early. 
I did not get there in time for that, myself. In order 
to have gotten you aboard it in time, we would have 
had to start almost at daybreak and at that time 
there was no actual indication of such a storm.” 

He left shortly after although Nancy did her best 
to dissuade him. “Heavenly day, Mr. Bob, you’ll 
never get home. Better stay here with us.” 


130 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Yes, do,” said Mary Rose, never a creature of 
conventions. 

But he shook his head. “And let my Airedales 
starve in that shack? Not much! Don’t worry, 
I’ll make it, but thank you both.” 

As he went to the door she followed him. “You’re 
sure you’re all right?” 

“Perfectly. Now try to reconcile yourself to 
Christmas at Little Lodge with us.” 

A hand clasp and he was gone. She felt very for¬ 
lorn as she went back to the fire and absently stroked 
the flaming back of Red who crept to her side and 
then stood up to put his head on her knee. She felt 
very much alone. If he had only stayed! 

He not only went but he did not come back, and 
it snowed and snowed and snowed. Mary Rose, 
when her “day after tomorrow” arrived and dawned 
in its now usual blanket of white, began drearily to 
imagine that it never would stop. It was like a 
second flood, only frozen! 

Nancy and Sam did their best to comfort her. 
The meals were perfection, if many of them did 
evolve out of tins. At night Nancy would come into 
the big room with her knitting and talk to Mary 
Rose of her young days back in Vermont and invite 
Mary Rose to talk of herself, which, as every one 
knows, is a sure cure for the blues. 

The evening of the twenty-third Nancy had an 
inspiration. Quite shyly, but with rotundly beam- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


131 


ing face, she brought forth an ancient pack of cards 
and invited her charge to have them “read.” There 
by the fire they sat, Mary Rose, slim and flushed 
and boyish in her knickers, Nancy, prim in her spot¬ 
less apron, her fat face very sober and the cards 
laid out between them on a little homemade table. 

“A gypsy woman taught me,” Nancy said, in dep¬ 
recation. “Of course there ain’t anything in it, but 
I thought-” 

“Please, Nancy!” 

Nancy pleased. Her stubby finger on the cards, 
“the dimples in her hands fairly winking,” as Mary 
Rose said afterwards, and her pleasant voice muted 
to the solemn occasion, she read: 

“A tall man—deep waters there and trouble, 
but sunshine at the end. And another man, some¬ 
times it seems like the same one, but it ain’t—ex¬ 
actly. And a blonde man to make trouble. There’s 
a strange woman here, too, Miss Mary Rose— 
blonde, she is, and big. You’ll be meeting her 
soon-” 

The voice droned on, conning the old words 
“trouble, happiness, a letter,” and Mary Rose almost 
fell asleep listening. Of course she didn’t believe in 
such nonsense but—the firelight, the monotonous 
voice and the shadows on the wall. It was all a 
little eerie. 

Later, to the accompaniment of laughter, her own 
and Sam’s throaty chuckle from the shadows where 




132 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


he watched and smoked, Mary Rose and Nancy 
played Old Maid—and then, suddenly it was bed¬ 
time and more suddenly still it was the morning of 
Christmas Eve, a grey morning and no snow. 

By noon the sun was out—not very much out, 
he was a mere disk in the sky, a round piece of gold 
hammered flat and very pale—but he did his gallant 
best. 

At tea time came Carter. She was so glad to see 
him! When she heard the step and the stamping 
on the doorsill, her heart almost jumped from her 
body. But how silly! Marooned such ages she 
would have been glad to see the the corner bootblack, 
she argued. Shouts for Sam—and more shouts 
and noise and laughter, and then the door was wide 
to the white world and the reddening disk of gold 
and Sam and Bob came in, between them a huge 
pine. 

“Merry Christmas Eve!” He had bundles in his 
pockets and laughter in his eyes, he was fresh 
smelling from the out-of-doors and there was color 
in his lean cheeks. 

Mary Rose ran to him. “A tree!” said she un¬ 
necessarily. 

“Absolutely. Unless my eyesight is failing. And 
I’m going to stay for supper and until after mid¬ 
night! Somewhere in this house there is a box of 
Christmas-tree trimmings and I order you, as you 
value your life, to hang up a stocking—or even two!” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


133 


Afterward, looking back, she thought that Christ¬ 
mas Eve the most fantastic she had ever lived 
through and almost the happiest. There was an early- 
gala supper and from some hidden storeroom Sam 
produced a bottle of homemade wine which Mary- 
Rose was allured into sipping. The storeroom was 
turned upside down until two hat boxes of trim¬ 
mings were triumphantly produced and a stand for 
the tree. Once supper was cleared, Nancy vanished 
and presently, the clatter of dish-washing stilled, 
there was a great noise as of dough being mishandled 
and eggs being ill-treated and then—a marvelous 
smell of baking. 

Sam and Bob set up the tree in a corner that 
seemed built for it and Sam dragged in a stepladder 
and the boxes were opened and the work began. 

“Got a turkey,” said Bob proudly. “Couldn’t 
get any holly though.” 

“You’ve been to the village!” 

“This morning—on snowshoes—after I selected 
and cut this pleasant old chap down. Seems a pity 
—but there are many more where he came from.” 

The boxes disclosed ribbons and colored globes 
and a dear wax angel, her pretty nose just a trifle 
chipped, and glass icicles and all the regular trim¬ 
mings that go with a tree, very little tarnished and 
making a brave show. Then there were candles, 
too, dozens of them, red and green and blue, and 
shining tinsel stars. 


134 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


It was late when the work was finished and Mary 
Rose stepped back to look at her job. It was lovely 
with the gracious tree and the waiting candles. She 
breathed very deeply. She forgot Five Chimneys, 
the ungrateful girl, and the lonely Christmas soon to 
dawn above The Place. 

Carter superintended the hanging up of her stock¬ 
ing and was excessively fussy about the right corner 
of the fireplace and very particular as to the angle 
the slim emptiness of it made hanging there. 

“Where’s yours!” she demanded; but he refused. 

“Too old.” 

Mary Rose ransacked her thoughts. She had 
nothing for him. Yes, she had—that little unfinished 
sketch she had made for her own pleasure. He should 
have that. She would sit up late after he had gone 
and complete it for his Christmas. 

They sat down by the fire together, tired and com¬ 
fortable and wrapped in a friendly silence. “What 
a strange Christmas,” she said, breaking the spell 
which seemed to her to be weaving itself about her. 
“The strangest I ever spent.” 

“Don’t you wish Jabez were here?” he asked her, 
laughing. 

“Of course. What’s a house without a host?” she 
asked in her turn. 

“I’m proxy,” said Bob, agreeably. “Jabez will 
be jealous but I don’t care.” 

After a time Nancy appeared with fresh baked 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


135 


cakes, glasses of the blackberry wine and, inevitably, 
a steaming pot of coffee. She placed it at Mary 
Rose’s elbow who found, to her astonishment, that 
she was hungry. 

“I’m always starved!” she announced, seizing a 
cake. 

Carter watched her. “I think,” he said suddenly, 
“that you are the happiest person I ever knew.” 

She looked at him in amazement. “Why?” 

“Ah, why. That’s just it. I wish you would tell 
me the secret.” 

“There isn’t any.” 

“That’s the answer, I suppose,” he told her, “and 
all the rest of us poor devils rushing around looking 
for the key.” 

The letter from Jabez flashed into her mind. 
Indeed it lay always in the background of her con¬ 
sciousness. She held her breath a minute and then 
said, gently: “It’s just the rushing around that de¬ 
feats its own ends. You see—everyone has the key, 
really, inside. No one loses it. People just mislay 
it, I suppose, or hide it under—rubbish.” 

He said abruptly, “Christmas Eve—and firelight 
—and all the setting for confidences. Mary Rose, 
will you give me a gift for Christmas?” 

She said, gladly, in a little soft rush of words, 
“Why, of course!” 

He turned as he half lay in the deerskin chair 
and looked at her. “What? You make no bar- 


136 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


gains? Hedge not? No half promises? Sometimes 
I don’t believe you’re a woman at all, you have so 
few of the mental earmarks. Well, then, your gift 
to me is—silence. I- am going to tell you a story.” 

Her heart beat so loudly she thought she must 
press a hand on it, call to it to stop. What was he 
going to tell her? 

“It was in France,” he said, without further pre¬ 
liminaries. “I—I had a very good time during the 
war. That sounds odd, does it not? But there was 
much for me over there. I flew, you know, with the 
Lafayette bunch. That was early in the game. 
Good days, fine comrades and the life of wings under 
me. It was long ago-” 

There was a silence. She waited, her eyes on his 
intent face. He gave himself a little shake as if he 
flung off dreams and went on evenly and low. 

“After a time there was a girl, a French girl. I 
had letters to her family and spent a leave at their 
place. It was all very beautiful and I was a little 
tired of just men. It seemed almost like peace, 
there, and there were gardens and a terrace and 
dogs—and the girl. She wore white, always white, 
and lovely—oh, my good Lord! Dark, you know, 
and very slim and tall, with the face of a cameo and 
the loveliest smile. I learned more French in the 
first day I was there than in all the days before.” 

He was starting to speak jerkily. Mary Rose saw 
his hands close and unclose as he continued. 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


137 


“The beginning. Later, I was there again— 
trouble then, the brother killed, the father ill and, 
suddenly, I was ordered back to the front. I took 
with me her promise to be my wife and I was de¬ 
termined that the promise be fulfilled soon. France 
is the hardest place in the world in which to get 
married but there was influence and all that sort 
of thing. I managed later—just a day—and we 
were married. I left her half an hour after. 

“Then you know how things went—topsy-turvy. 
I was ordered home at last, without seeing her and at 
the first opportunity she was to follow. But that 
took months. She came, of course. Mine! My 
wife! But the minute she put her hands in mine, 
I saw how it was with her—homesick, frightened, 
not knowing me, that stranger in civilian clothes. I 
had been ill, an accident to the plane just before 
sailing orders, a little shell-shocked, they said; nerv¬ 
ous, anyway, irritable and changed. Details aren’t 
essential. I sent her home again. There was another 
man, it seems. I knew him, a man of her own 
people, her own rank. She had met him again shortly 
before we were married and after. Here everything 
was alien: the language, the customs, the people. 

She cried herself sick. She- I was never her 

husband,” he ended abruptly. 

Mary Rose made a soft little sound. Everything 
was in it, sympathy, understanding; yet he contin¬ 
ued, as if he had read her heart. 



138 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“No. You don’t understand. These are just 
words I am giving you. The suddenness of her 
beauty on my hungry eyes, all the days and nights 
away from her with death all around me, and then 
—home and the long waiting. No, you couldn’t 
understand. And at the end of it, just those great 
eyes of hers—and the tears—the tears—God, will 
I ever forget! She—shrank from me,” he said 
very low. 

“The end is simple to tell. Her church does not 
allow divorce, you know, but it was all so easy— 
annulment. She went—home.” 

“Oh—poor thing!” said Mary Rose, her heart 
wrung. 

He looked at her oddly. His eyes seemed a 
little sunken and there were deep lines around his 
mouth. “The girl?” he questioned. 

“Yes, don’t you see? War and the glamour—and 
you, like a man-bird from the sky and she so young 
and all the horror of it close to her. Can’t you see? 
Then to come here, alone and afraid and to realize 
the dreadful mistake, the mirage it had been—and 
you blaming her.” 

“Not blaming,” he said heavily. 

She leaned over and touched his hand. “And poor 
you,” she said, “all this time, brooding and not for¬ 
giving. Don’t you see how dreadful it would have 
been? You were not for her, or she for you.” 

A clock struck. Nancy came in lightly with a 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


139 


taper in her hand and suddenly all the candles flared 
up on the tree. Mary Rose jumped to her feet. 

“Christmas! Oh!” she said to Bob so low that 
the two others did not hear her, “Oh, say it from 
your heart —Merry Christmas! If she is happy, 
is that not what you wanted? If you love her and 
she is happy , doesn’t that mean anything to you? 
Her happiness, her ultimate safety?” 

He got to his feet, stumbling a little as a man 
stumbles who awakes from a dream. 

“Merry Christmas!” said Bob Carter. 


CHAPTER XI 


A little later she saw his face as they stood for 
a moment on the steps, leave-taking. A wrap thrown 
hastily around her, she had lingered there, wondering 
and enchanted. The night sky was as clear as blue- 
black glass and the Christmas stars had come forth 
from their celestial hiding places and were casting 
the silver serenity of their light upon the snow. 

She had seen his face. He had said “Merry 
Christmas!” in that way—the way of lighted eyes 
and smiling lips—to please her. It was not merry 
in his heart; nor was it Christmas. In bed, lying 
long awake, she thought back. She had accused him 
of not forgiving, of brooding. Was that quite true? 
Something, she knew, was very deeply wounded in 
him. Pride? Love? Was it because the sword 
thrust had come at a time when he was least able, 
physically and mentally, to bear it? 

A golden Christmas morning! Sam had been up 
early and had toiled down to the lake to sweep the 
snow from a skateable area, for the sheet of water 
was now fast locked in ice and the wind during the 
night had brushed most of the snow from it. Car¬ 
ter came early too, in time for breakfast, and after¬ 
wards, with much solemnity, assisted Mary Rose to 
delve into the contents of her Christmas stocking. 

140 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


141 


She was amazed. From Nancy there was a pair of 
wristlets, warm and knitted; from Bob, a pair of 
little Indian moccasins, beaded in blue and scarlet; 
from Sam, a little slip-cover, suitable for the housing 
of her most favorite book, in birch bark; and—in the 
toe, an envelope and a card from Jabez. 

“Merry Christmas,” it read, “and may your dear¬ 
est wish come true.” 

With the card there was a check, double the 
second installment of her fee. Mary Rose gasped, 
waving the slip of grey paper under the amused nose 
of Carter. 

“Sight unseen! The man’s insane! And twice as 
much! Oh, it isn’t possible—it’s all a part of the 
magic. How on earth did he know I would be up 
here for Christmas?” she accused. 

Carter laughed. 

“He didn’t, of course, but he is very weather wise, 
that one. He sent the check to me a full week ago 
—in case. In any event you were to have it before 
you left. The card he enclosed was to go with it. 
Had you departed on the specified day, it would have 
been a little premature but fully as appropriate.” 

“But he hasn’t even seen the picture!” she 
mourned. 

“He took my word for it!” said Bob, modestly. 

Mary Rose, remembering suddenly, presented him 
with the pen a ad ink sketch she had sat up until two 
to finish. Just one pine on a high hill, a lovely, lonely 


142 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


thing, very aspiring and very strong. He took it in 
his two hands carefully. 

“Thank you.” 

Later he said, “What do you call it?” 

Without surprise, she answered, “I think— 
‘Courage’.” 

He said nothing, but leaned across from his chair 
to touch her hand and smile into her eyes. “Thank 
you again.” 

“Oh!” said Mary Rose’s impulsive heart, “I love 
him so much!” And she did. 

A hatred of the unknown French girl flushed her 
cheeks scarlet. Now that she knew—but had she 
not always known?—she could no longer be an im¬ 
partial judge of that tangle. “It’s like a dime novel,” 
she thought to herself.—She would not face it—not 
yet. Instead she allowed Sam and Carter to rum¬ 
mage about until they found skates which fitted her 
and with these over her arm and snowshoes tempo¬ 
rarily on her feet, she floundered down the little cliff 
and reached the ice. 

That was truly a wonderful morning. Carter 
skated superbly and Mary Rose, as she afterwards 
said, “managed.” They came in at noon and smelled 
turkey and by the time the brown bird was served 
to them at just the right distance from the fire, 
they were ravenous. It was a real Christmas dinner 
for Mary Rose. 

Afterwards, he endeavored to instruct her in the 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


143 


first rudiments of skiing; she did not do very well, 
but she loved it. Then there was tea with spice 
cookies and almond paste and two-handed bridge. 
When the sudden dusk fell, the lamps were lighted 
and the Christmas-tree candles glowed. 

“Mary Rose! What a reckless bidder you are!” 

“But there are only two of us,” she defended her¬ 
self, “and I’ve no partner to consider.” 

“Consider your losses, my child,” he begged her, 
“consider, occasionally, yourself!” 

“Pooh!” said she, magnificently, “there’s no fun 
in that—ever, is there?” 

He put down his hand and lighted a pipe. With 
the smoke rising blue above his tall head, he leaned 
back and looked at her. 

“I don’t know. I’ve always been infernally cau¬ 
tious.” 

“But-” she began, in honest astonishment, and 

then stopped. 

He turned his eyes away and his face darkened. 
“You needn’t spare me. I know what you were 
going to say—what you were thinking. Well, it was 
the first time that I had ever taken a real risk—I 
don’t mean life risks, physical risks—I’ve always 
taken those—but a—well, let us say heart risk—and 
you know what happened. I have a theory now; 
perhaps I always had it. The less a man gives of 
himself, his real self, the better off he is. Do 
you know Housman’s verse? 


144 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


‘When I was one and twenty, 

I heard a wise man say, 

Give crowns and pounds and guineas 
But not your heart away.’ 

“Well, there you have it. Giving yourself, whether 
to a woman or a friend or to a dog or a dream—it’s 
dangerous business, Mary Rose.” 

She answered absently, “We’ve traveled a long 
way from my reckless bidding.” 

“Not as far as you think. Three no-trumps on a 
hand with two face cards in it, is merely an out¬ 
ward and visible sign of your inward and invisible 
makeup,” he told her. “Remember what I said to 
you on the train? Your coming up here, all your 
plans for future adventure, it’s all of a piece.” 

“I don’t care!” She was defiant. “I get—so 
much out of it. You do get what you give. I know 
it. And to think,” she ended soberly, “that for days 
and days I thought you were Jabes Jones himself!” 

He did not laugh, nor did he seem astonished by 
the confession. “What more natural? I was sure 
that you would. Yet—why do you no longer think 
so?” 

“He—gives himself,” she said. 

Carter raised his eyebrows. “Money? An en¬ 
couraging letter to a struggling unknown?” 

“Money doesn’t count for—that!” she snapped 
her fingers and gestured largely, considering the size 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


145 


of the check in her pocket and her delight at pos¬ 
sessing it. “As for the letters, he is in them. I 
know it. And then, you couldn’t be Jabez Jones— 
not in a million years. Why—he’s happy” 

“And I’m not? Well, let that pass. So he’s 
happy, is he? How do you know?” 

“He wants other people to be,” said Mary Rose. 

“Is that a recipe?” 

She did not answer. His voice hurt her, his eyes 
hurt her, her own heart hurt her. 

Bob picked up her hand. “A diamond,” he said. 

After supper he came back once more to the topic. 
“I suppose, from your viewpoint, I’m a failure.” 

“Yes.” 

He shrugged then laughed a little. “But not from 
my own. Of course, I amount to very little. I have 
a good deal of money and therefore no urge to work.” 

“Does just plenty of money constitute c no urge?’ ” 
she asked swiftly. 

“You think every man should work?” 

“I do. He’s got to give something to the world, 
hasn’t he? Something of his two hands or his brain 
or his dreams? I can’t see that he’s any good else. 
Take our Jabez, for instance, I know nothing about 
him, I guess much. Of course I understand that he 
has means, but I am willing to bet you his Christmas 
present to a shiny dime that he ‘works’—does some¬ 
thing.” 

“No takers. Of course he does. He has a very 


146 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


large and very important business and is at his 
desk every morning at eight or some such time, when 
he is near enough to the desk to get to it.” 

“I knew it. Oh, why,” she asked him, with a sud¬ 
den pleading note, “why don’t you have a desk?” 

Carter considered. “Come to think of it, I don’t 
know. I have no people, you know, none to mention. 
My father’s business—there was once a place in 
that for me, perhaps there still is, but, after the 
war, I didn’t think about it. I don’t like his busi¬ 
ness anyway; and I wasn’t educated for any profes¬ 
sion.” 

“Isn’t there anything you’d like to do?” she asked 
him. 

Abruptly he smiled and her heart misgave her. 
She was trying so hard to kill the first frail green 
shoots of her love for him, was blanketing them 
under the snows of real disapproval, but when he 
smiled like that! “Oh, pshaw,” said Mary Rose to 
her heart, “go ahead and love him! ” 

“Yes, there is, and you’ll laugh when I tell you. 
I’d like to run a camp.” 

“A what?” 

“Speak English? C-a-m-p, camp! A camp for 
boys—all sizes and kinds of boys—run it sensibly 
and pay expenses but make nothing—prices so that 
any boy could come for the summer months. This 
place would be ideal, Jabez’s place and my place— 
buildings, of course, and tent sites.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


147 


“Why don’t you do it?” asked Mary Rose simply. 

He laughed shortly. “No, thank you. Too much 
of myself would go into it.” 

“You’re hopeless,” she said. 

“Quite,” said Carter, cheerful in agreement. 

Two days later, with tearful farewells from Nancy 
and a hand clasp from Sam that deprived her fingers 
of feeling for an hour afterward, Mary Rose set out 
for home. They went by sleigh to the station, Bob 
driving. He was not returning with her. 

It was a silent drive. Mary Rose faced more than 
she wanted to on it. She might never see him again. 
What if she didn’t? She could go on loving him 
just the same. The age of declines and swoons was 
over. Loving him couldn’t possibly hurt him; per¬ 
haps it might help him. He needed a great deal 
of loving, she thought. As for herself, she had her 
work and her friends and all her magic ahead of her. 

As if he had read a part of her thoughts, he said 
to her, as they neared the station, “This isn’t the 
end, you know. You’ll let me keep in touch with 
you? You and Jabez won’t part on this, I know 
that. I will have word of you through him, but I’d 
a lot rather it were first hand. May I come to 
Wellport? You are such a salutary person, Mary 
Rose Rogers, you’re good for me.” 

She said, demurely, over a racing heart, “Do come. 
I shall be so glad, but I am going South shortly, with 
Miss Fairfax.” 


148 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Oh, yes, the lady with the Carolina garden in 
January. I remember that you told me. She 
appears horticulturally unsound to me. Well—per¬ 
haps I will see you there; Aiken is an old stamping 
ground of mine. If not, when you come back?” 

Then the train trip and her long thoughts, New 
York and Dean, lunch at the Ritz and talk, and de¬ 
livery of the canvas and sketches at the bank which 
represented Jabez. Dean was in a glow at her recital. 

“There’s romance! Christmas with a stranger- 
man! Mary Rose, you travel far and fast!” 

He came back to Wellport with her, and all the 
way down they quarrelled comfortably about his 
commission. “It was a rotten Christmas feast with¬ 
out you!” he told her. 

“You were home!” 

“Of course. Do you suppose I’d let those two 
dear parents of yours mope by themselves? We 
had quite a party. Your sulky friend, Osborne, 
and his nice sister came over, and the Perkins 
infant-” 

His expression was smooth as cream. Mary Rose 
looked at him accusingly. “Now don’t go turning 
that child’s head, Dean.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Was there mistletoe?” 

“Barrels,” he answered with a grin. “I kissed 
Miss Osborne on her virgin cheek and she has never 
recovered—so I hear.” 

“Idiot!” 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


149 


That was a home coming. They were so glad to 
see her they forgot to blame her for the snow and 
listened all evening to her tales of Nancy and Sam— 
and Carter. Osborne, who had come over unex¬ 
pectedly and who was really endeavoring to make 
himself agreeable, found a moment alone with her 
before he left. In her hands was his usual Christmas 
candy box. 

“Mary Rose, I’m sorry for all the-” 

“Oh, don’t say it,” she told him swiftly. “I was 
cross and cantankerous. Let’s forget it, Tom. It’s 
not suitable to hold grudges at Christmas—not 
seasonable.” 

“It was only that I worried about you,” he said 
humbly. “It seemed so wrong for you to go off by 
yourself that way—among strangers. This man 
Carter now-” 

She stiffened. “What about him?” 

“Don’t go up in the air,” he pleaded. “I just 
wondered—your letters—your father showed me 
some—they mentioned him so much and the wire 
that came was signed by him. Is he a sort of care¬ 
taker, too?” 

“You know he isn’t. He is a friend of Mr. Jones’s 
and lives nearby. The caretakers are Sam and his 
wife and son. The son was only there the first 
day or two. He is employed somewhere, as a care¬ 
taker of another estate, I believe. Would you like 
to know any more?” 




150 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


They came within an inch of another quarrel. 
When he had left she thought to herself, “It’s no 
use. It will always be like that with Tom and me. 
I don’t know why; just a natural antagonism, now 
that we’ve grown up.” 

In the middle of the night, in her own dear 
familiar room, she awoke and found herself listening 
for snow against the pane and the shout of great 
winds, challenging the pine trees, but it was very 
still save for the distant bark of one of the dogs from 
the kennels. The Nonsense Cat slept in her basket, 
the curtains at the windows stirred in the cool air, 
the little new moon was shining across the fields; 
she could see its path. She was home again, but 
it was not as much home as it had been before. 

She sat up in bed and whistled softly to herself. 
Miranda awoke and leaped lightly to the bed where 
she sat purring, her eyes two little lamps in the 
darkness. Mary Rose reached out a hand and 
stroked the arched neck. “Nice beastie.” But 
she still sat there, in her thin nightgown, uncon¬ 
scious of the cold, her dark curls ruffled and her 
cheeks burning. She had made another discovery. 

“But—how perfectly ridiculous! Here I am in 
love with a man who doesn’t love me and I’m not in 
the least unhappy about it! I’m glad! I’m inter¬ 
ested! I feel twice as alive as I ever did before. 
The books are wrong—wrong—wrong and so are all 
the snuffy, sniffy, moany poets who break their hearts 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


151 


in rhyme. Being loved back doesn’t matter,” said 
Mary Rose, colloquially, “not a bit. Nothing mat¬ 
ters but loving and that makes for happiness, some¬ 
how.” 

She shivered and lay down again, pulling the 
covers about her throat. Miranda, unreprimanded, 
crept beneath them to the curve of her arm. 

“If I could only make him see that,” she argued 
thoughtfully, “I think that canker eating at his 
heart would be healed. If I could only make him 
see that her not caring didn’t matter, that it was 
his caring and his giving her up that mattered— 
beautifully, that somehow he fulfilled himself after 
all.” 


CHAPTER XII 


Oh, well! She wasn’t one of the broody kind 
and her life was filled with much to make her happy 
because it was cram-full of interests. Christmas was 
over—done with. The new year was at hand. To¬ 
ward the end of the month she would go down to Box¬ 
wood with Miss Sally. New vistas! New windows 
toward the east! Meantime, there were letters from 
Dean back in town, unable for a time to get away as 
he was very busy with pupils and his own work; an 
encouraging word from Mr. Mann; Tom, who had 
slipped back, if uneasily, into a semblance of the 
old, happy friendship, also Lou Perkins to com¬ 
fort, a disconsolate little creature “merely existing,” 
as she confided to Mary Rose, until her convenient 
cousin’s inconvenient children should go back to 
boarding school and leave room for her, Lou, in the 
Village apartment. 

Mary Rose, in a period of idleness, looked back 
over her summer. There was so much that was 
pleasant to remember; Dean and her work and all 
the avenues that led from it; the visits of her be¬ 
loved aunts; health, sunshine, her own people; and 
at last Little Lodge and Bob—a rather pleasant hurt, 
somehow and always Jabez. To her very inco¬ 
herent letter of thanks he had written: 

152 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


153 


“But the thanks are all on my side, not only for 
my executed commissions, which are more than I 
could have hoped for, beautiful, lasting reminders of 
much joy and some sorrow, but because you took me 
on trust! Think what that means, nowadays, Mary 
Rose! Not that I despair of Today; I find it very 
lovely and growing more so with time. Then, too, 
for the sunshine you have brought into the life of 
my friend, Bob Carter, I have also to thank you. He 
has told you, I know, something of what has dark¬ 
ened his days these many months. I think perhaps 
there is a way out for him, Mary Rose, if only he 
will look for it.” 

From Bob himself, not a line, except at the New 
Year when a startlingly lovely and extravagant rose¬ 
bush in blossom was sent her with his card and on 
it the words, “With every rose that breaks to bloom, 
a wish comes true.” His wishes? Her wishes? Or 
the wishes of the winter-locked world? 

In between what she called her holiday and Miss 
Sally’s lien on her time, Mary Rose painted two 
little pictures for people whose letters had been 
answered. One was a happy picture, the farmhouse 
in Sag Harbor where a great man had been born and 
which his wife wished to have set down on canvas 
for his grandchildren; and the other, a sad little one, 
but somehow lovely, the picture of a small, winter- 
softened grave in an obscure Long Island cemetery 
where the mother of a New York merchant lay 


154 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


sleeping. Mary Rose met each of her “clients” per¬ 
sonally; the frail, thin, old woman, the bluff, ruddy¬ 
faced man and while their personalities made no 
very great impression on her, and their brief appear¬ 
ance into her life made no lasting mark, she was 
always glad to think of them as of two who remem¬ 
bered. For she was beginning to believe that much 
of life’s joy and success lay in right remembering — 
in forgetting what was ugly and distorted and un- 
happy, and in remembering what was beautiful and 
blessed—not excluding the sad things, because be¬ 
tween things unhappy and things sorrowful there 
is a great gulf. 

Then suddenly a whirl of trunks and farewells 
and admonitions and she was southward bound in 
the now accustomed luxury of drawing-rooms and 
parlor cars with Miss Sally as her escort. 

There was already a hint of spring in the Caro¬ 
linian air; a soft, piercingly sweet quality to the 
wind, a bluer depth to the sky, a total lack of snow, 
although on chilly mornings the frost lay light upon 
the fields. Mary Rose loved her new surroundings. 
The old brick house was as friendly as open arms, 
as gracious and dignified as the court ladies of your 
dreams; there were literally miles of the boxwood 
which gave it its name, and long, lovely drives 
through woods just starting to show an evanescent 
shimmer of green. 

Her room, next to Miss Sally’s, was a vision in 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


155 


rose and grey, with time-mellowed mahogany furni¬ 
ture, quaint hunting prints on the walls, worn, sweet¬ 
smelling chintz and wide windows. She felt as if 
she had always lived there. 

As for Miss Sally, the dearest companion, the 
prettiest old lady that ever stepped out of a picture 
frame, she moved about the house on small, light 
feet and ruled a dozen or more delighted minions 
whose facial color schemes ranged from purest ebony 
to cafe au lait. On the morning after their arrival 
she took Mary Rose to the garden. 

“There! And now I reckon you’ll want to go 
straight home!” 

Boxwood hedges, benches, a silent fountain, a 
sundial, grey and lichened, a border of growing, 
gorgeous violets, a planting of the wild May rose— 
and that was all. Mary Rose looked about her 
and smiled. 

“It’s beautiful—just as it is. Promises—I see 
them in every bush and every tree. And it’s so clean 
and fragrant smelling, Miss Sally.” 

“I want it painted—now,” Miss Sally said. 
“Later it is very wonderful, of course. See the rose 
trellis? It’s a thing of beauty in a few months 
and there are many, many flowering shrubs as well 
as the set beds. But I have a reason for wanting 
it just as it is—in between seasons, just waking up. 
Can you do it, Mary Rose, dear?” 

She could and did, all through the last few days of 


156 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

January and the first days of February when the 
sun came out a little more each day and the violets 
drenched the air in fragrance. She made a very 
lovely picture of it, a picture that seemed to breathe 
clear air, in which the bare trees stood on tiptoe— 
and waited. That was what struck Mary Rose about 
the garden—waiting. She spoke of it to Miss Sally. 

“I know,” the little lady said, as she sat before 
the fire in the long drawing-room and stirred her 
after-dinner coffee with a spoon beaten by time to 
the merest whisper of silver, “I know. It has been 
waiting for many years. Mary Rose, ;for ovler 
twenty years I have only come home to Boxwood 
at this season. When the garden blooms, I am not 
here. I look over planting and weeding and seeding 
plans, I work them out; I know just how things 
will look, but I am not here. Instead, when I leave, 
I give my people orders to throw the garden open 
to the public and it is almost a playground for tired 
folks all spring and all summer long. Everyone 
knows the custom and few have taken advantage of 
it to hurt the least living thing about the place.” 

Mary Rose wondered. To make a garden, year 
after year, and then shut one’s eyes wilfully to the 
realization of it—the full bloom of it. She didn’t 
understand, but being Mary Rose, and wise for a 
little thing, she asked no questions. 

They were there three happy weeks. Mary Rose 
met a number of Miss Sally’s friends and, to be sure, 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 157 

it seemed as if almost everyone within a radius of 
fifty miles was Miss Sally’s friend. Old and young, 
rich and poor, from home and hotel, they flocked to 
Boxwood for the inevitable afternoon tea and eyed 
Mary Rose with a charming mixture of well-bred 
curiosity and friendly welcome. Miss Sally, now, 
was their own; her, they cajoled, flattered, teased, 
openly claimed and adored. 

Suddenly, when two weeks were up, a letter came. 

“Dear Mary Rose: 

I have left Little Lodge and my own shack and 
am coming to Aiken. I understand that I shall be 
very near the Fairfax place. In truth, that is why 
I am coming—in order to be near. Since you left 
us, Nancy and Sam and old Red and me, I have been 
doing a powerful lot of thinking. I have seen Jabez, 
too. There’s a man who loves you, Mary Rose, 
and I was able to tell him that I firmly believed his 
affection was requited. Yes, I’ve been thinking and 
I have decided a number of things. One is that 
I’m no good; another is that it’s never too late to 
mend with the proper amount of help; and a third 
is that I don’t think it will be easy to get on without 
you to do the helping. 

I’ll be in Aiken on Tuesday and with you as soon 
as I can get there. 

Gratefully, 

Bob Carter.” 


158 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She sat with that letter for a long time out in the 
waiting garden in the afternoon sun, so long that 
the sudden shadows fell and she shivered in the 
creeping chill of a dusk wind that blew now high, 
now low, the candle flame of the youngest star; sat 
until Miss Sally hurried out to find her and ex¬ 
claimed over the coldness of her hands and the 
pinched look on her colorless face. With words of 
soft sternness she shooed her into the house before 
the fire, while she sent old Adam, the ancient butler, 
for a hot drink for her. 

Mary Rose was rather absent-mindedly thankful. 
Tuesday! She made not one single evasion to or 
from herself. She knew—knew why he had written, 
why he was coming. But he didn’t love her. She 
was equally sure of that. What was he asking her 
to be, she inquired fiercely of herself, a sofa cushion 
after a weary day, a makeshift, a proxy? She and 
her pride spoke long together, then she and her love; 
and pride crept away, vanquished, as it almost 
always must be. She made up her mind that when 
he asked her to marry him—not if —she knew there 
was to be no if but just when —she would say “No.” 
If he asked for a reason, there were a great many 
to give. She did not love him. She did not know 
him. She was sorry; she hoped he would remain 

her friend. Between now and—was it Tuesday?_ 

surely she could school her eyes to the cool warmth 
of friendship, her lips to the austere curves of in- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


159 


difference, her hands to the steady firmness of the 
final clasp. But she reckoned without Miss Sally. 

The picture was finished and ready for varnishing. 
Miss Sally sat long before it, her hands folded in her 
lavender voile lap. Presently she shook her head 
so that the dewdrop diamonds which hung from 
her small ears shook and trembled in the light of 
many candles, for, although Boxwood was modern 
unto Edison, nothing save candles burned in the 
drawing-rooms and dining-hall. Mary Rose was on 
a hassock before the fire. Somewhere a clock struck 
nine. Outside a clear, warm night brooded, thickly 
set with stars. 

Miss Sally rose and came to the fire, sat down in 
her favorite shabby chair and took up her knitting. 
Her eyes were on the bent dark head just beyond 
her knee. A little wind came in from the French 
windows and musically stirred the crystal lustres. 

“Troubled, honey?” 

“A little, Miss Sally.” 

“Was it the letter that took you into the garden 
and kept you there till you most caught your death 
of cold?” persisted the soft, southern voice, with the 
accent impossible to capture on paper. 

“Yes, Oh Witch-Lady!” answered Mary Rose 
laughing a little. 

“When it’s a letter, it’s a man,” said Miss Sally, 

wisely, “and when it’s a man-” She paused and 

then continued, “Is it something you must decide?” 


160 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Mary Rose looked up at her. She had no knowl¬ 
edge of the pain and appeal in the eyes she raised 
to those of her hostess, no knowledge of the divine 
mother-heart that stirred in the quiet breast under 
the old lace, the breast that had never felt the touch 
of children’s lips and hands and was, perhaps, for 
that very reason, a harbor for all the sorrows of other 
people’s babies—little, or just grown tall. 

“Then don’t tell me, lamb. I might help you 
decide and that’s always a mistake; people must 
decide for themselves. It’s wrong to try and play 
Providence. Whatever it is, the hurt is new with 
you. When it heals a little then tell me, not now. 
You won’t be seeing things quite clearly now, per¬ 
haps not quite fairly.” 

Mary Rose nodded. The impulse was strong in 
her to confide in this understanding woman. Yet, 
perhaps, better not. 

“If it lies between you and—one other,” the quiet 
voice went on, “don’t share it—even in your per¬ 
plexity.” 

A silence fell on the great cool room. The lustres 
sang together and from back in the cabin quarters 
there came a sound of deep-throated, plaintive sing¬ 
ing. Things were, at Boxwood, as though much 
had never been, as if there had been no wars and 
rumors of wars, no sudden fret and fever of modern 
life, no clamor and hurry and heartbreak. Life, 
at this moment, seemed as unreal to Mary Rose as 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


161 


a dream, as a story once read and dimly remem¬ 
bered, as an old perfume or a half-forgotten song. 
Somewhere just ahead of her the real life stood, 
insistent with its claims and counterclaims. For the 
briefest moment she pushed it from her and dreamed 
a little, there at Miss Sally’s knee. 

Then, “Miss Sally,” she asked her, “what is the 
finest thing one can give a man?” 

Miss Sally answered instantly—the steady click 
of her steel needles neither paused nor halted, 
“Honesty,” she said. 

“Not—love?” 

“It’s not always love they need,” said Miss Sally, 
“not all the time, but absolute honesty, always.” 

Honesty? If she followed that precept what must 
she tell Bob Carter when he came? 

Miss Sally went on knitting and as she knitted she 
spoke, so quietly it almost seemed as if Mary Rose 
had dreamed and not heard it. 

“If I had been honest, Mary Rose, my garden 
need not have waited. Listen and I will tell you. 

“It was very long ago. I was born in this old 
house and lived here all my young days, such days 
as young people nowadays do not know of—gaiety 
in plenty, but of such a different sort: hunting, 
riding, dancing; and every girl with any claim to 
beauty could count her men followers by the score. 
I, too, was an only child—petted, spoiled, adored, 
with an invalid mother—as lovely as a star—a hard- 


162 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


hunting, straight-shooting father. It was long ago. 
Among the many men there was one—tall, with 
chestnut hair and the bluest eyes I ever saw. He 
lived not far from us. I knew him as a child, as 
a girl, as a woman grown, and, beginning with the 
evening of my seventeenth birthday party, Mary 
Rose, he asked me to marry him. But I was not 
ready—too young, too unwilling to take on the 
responsibility, the cares—besides, I was so sure of 
him. 

“Then, my people died, and I was alone and went 
abroad to live for a time with my father’s sister 
who had married in Italy. Those were happy years 
too, in spite of my sorrow and the homesickness that 
came over me very often. I came back again, when 
I was twenty-two, my aunt, widowed by then, with 
me. I was a little harder, a little more brilliantly 
polished through the contact with the more formal 
European life. There had been men there too— 
one, a very great gentleman of much charm. I 
came home to be free of him and to find out for 
myself if I cared enough to take upon me the 
burden of his old name, to assume the dependence 
of the European wife, to adopt his land and his 
religion and his customs as my own. I was a little 
stirred by him and very much flattered. 

“I had been home a day when the other one came 
—my old playmate, the boy I had hunted and danced 
with, with whom I had flirted and laughed and who 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


163 


had kissed me once under the mistletoe, here in 
this very room. He hadn’t very much money, Mary 
Rose—that didn’t matter to me, of course, I had 
plenty—and there had fallen, since I had last seen 
him, a stain on his name—not through his fault, you 
understand, for a finer, more gallantly courageous 
soul never lived. But the stigma had aged him and 
he came to me a little broken, a little tired, but not 
beaten. 

“The two men, then, the one, in Italy—the other, 
here at home—and I had my choice. 

“But he wouldn’t ask me again; I knew that in¬ 
stantly. Wild horses could not have dragged from 
him the confession that used to come so lightly and 
easily and flamingly from his lips. I knew then, 
and I know now, that there was just one thing to 
do. If I wanted him, I should have taken my pride 
in my two hands and thrown it far away to all the 
winds and asked him—asked him for the gift that 
was rightfully mine and which his silence withheld. 
But I said nothing. 

“We walked in the garden, one afternoon. Just 
such a garden as you have painted for me—a garden, 
as you said, of promises, a garden that was waiting. 
Such a garden as was in my heart and his and which 
waited for my word, the word I did not speak. 

“I went back to Italy. I refused the other man 
and I tried to forget the garden. I was gay, never 
idle, and happy enough, I suppose, with my aunt 


164 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


whom I loved and her friends. I tried always to 
argue with myself that it was not my pride which 
stood in the way, but his. Had he cared enough, 
I would tell my listening heart, he would have 
spoken, no matter what the circumstances. Why 
should he expect me to break the tradition of years 
and speak? 

“We kept in touch; he wrote now and then. I 
knew he had not married; that he had done well, had 
lived down that dreadful thing which had happened 
in his family; that people loved him and that he was 
making a name for himself in his own line of work. 
I knew and rejoiced. And then, suddenly I was 
thirty and it was nearing spring and in Italy there 
were masses of flowers and trees in blossom. I sent 
him a message, finally. It seemed more than I could 
bear. Spring and— thirty! At home the garden 
would be waiting and not in blossom, so my message 
read: 'When the garden blooms I shall come home. 5 
I knew he would understand; things were so, be¬ 
tween us. Just the little, most fragile barrier 
between silence and the spoken word. He answered, 
'I shall be waiting. 5 

“When I came home, the garden was in bloom but 
he had not waited. He had been killed—a stone 
wall, a horse that stumbled at the leap. It sounds 
like melodrama, does it not? I left the garden and 
have never come back—when it was in bloom. 

“If I had been honest. He was honest, all those 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


165 


years before. His later silence was not so much 
pride as a certain honor. He knew, you see, about 
the great gentleman in Italy; he thought perhaps I 
w 7 ould be happier in that other life. Had I spoken, 
however, he would have known where my happiness 
lay. He knew me very well. It was as if he put me 
to the test. All those years before, I had flirted 
with him, flouted him, called him back again. He 
was not going to risk that again. Honesty matters 
so greatly, Mary Rose.” 

In the little following silence, Mary Rose laid 
her cheek fleetly against the lavender-sheathed knee, 
and lightly the still lovely hand touched her hair. 

“Bedtime, my dear.” 

Mary Rose leaned over and kissed the hand. 

aj_ v 

“Don’t say it!” the little lady warned her cheer¬ 
fully, “and now—a beauty sleep. You look very 
tired.” 

Odessa had been before Mary Rose to light the 
bed lamp and turn down the coverlets. She still 
moved about in the room, busy with the last little 
duties, a plate of fruit, a glass of milk, nightgown 
and slippers laid to rights. Odessa was the most 
soft-footed, soft-hearted creature that ever wore a 
black skin. 

After she had gone, Mary Rose stood quite still in 
the middle of the room. She did not see it, or any 
part of it. Her eyes were turned inward and she 



166 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


said to herself, “Honesty. That's it. That's what 
he's never had—not from that other girl, not really; 
but from me he shall have it—Tuesday—and 
always." 


CHAPTER XIII 


She was restless, restless! Miss Sally, from whose 
sharp, in the sense of alert, eyes little ever escaped, 
said to her laughing, on Tuesday evening, “I de¬ 
clare, Mary Rose, you are as nervous and mysteri¬ 
ous as a dozen witches. I’m going to lock up all the 
broomsticks in the house! ” 

Mary Rose, a red spot on either cheek and with 
hands not quite steady and eyes that fluttered from 
one thing in the room to the other, said, between 
laughter and tears, “Oh, I know it! And it makes 
me so mad! It’s—out of drawing. You know those 
Cubist and Dada things? I feel just like them, dis¬ 
torted and unreal, seen through one of those mirrors 
that pull you out of shape. I’m an optical illusion 
of my own self, Miss Sally, and I hate it because 
it’s so unlike me. You wouldn’t think I was nor¬ 
mally hysterical, would you?” she begged, earnestly. 

Miss Sally chuckled. “ ‘Normally hysterical!’ 
What a contradiction in terms! No, my child, I 
would not. You have all the earmarks of a sane 
and well-balanced woman-creature, a rarity in these 
days.” 

“I hate,” said Mary Rose, savagely, “neurotic, 
can’t-make-up-their-minds, moony-mopey women. 
Worse than ‘pizen,’ I hate ’em!” 

167 


168 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“When do you expect your young man?” asked 
Miss Fairfax, irrelevantly. 

Mary Rose literally jumped. “Who’s the witch 
now?” she accused. “How—how did you know?” 

Miss Sally raised her still dark and very beautiful 
eyebrows, “Oh, Mary Rose, it’s written all over you, 
honey, in letters a foot high. Speaking of letters, 
one comes to you, your mood changes and every time 
thereafter that the telephone rings, I can see you 
prick up your ears and I know that your little feet 
are itching to run to answer it.” 

As she spoke, the telephone actually obliged. Miss 
Sally looked at Mary Rose and Mary Rose, her lips 
parted on a retort, looked at Miss Sally. Adam 
answered; they could hear his slow voice in leisurely 
replies: 

“Yes, sir. Miss Rogers? Yes, sir. Just a minute.” 

“How opportune—quite like a play,” Miss Sally 
murmured impishly. 

Mary Rose, on her feet, hesitated. “Miss Sally, 
it’s—it’s the man I met up at Little Lodge. I told 
you. He’ll want to come out. May he?” 

“Certainly. Ask him for tea tomorrow.” 

Miss Sally heard, of course, only one side of the 
ensuing conversation. Lady though she might be, 
she did not stick her knitting needles into her ears 
to banish sound. Instead, she eavesdropped shame¬ 
lessly. “Little mischief,” she thought, amused and 
rather tender as she heard Mary Rose’s cool little 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


169 


voice, happy and friendly, but quite unstirred by any 
strong emotion. She heard the greeting, the ques¬ 
tion, the invitation, the “Good-bye till tomorrow,” 
and that was all. 

Mary Rose came back slowly into the room. The 
red spots had left her cheeks. They were not pale, 
however, but evenly flushed. 

“Well?” 

“Quite, thank you.” 

She paid her own poor little shopworn joke not 
even the tribute of an apologetic smile. She sat down 
in a deep chair and stared at a great bunch of violets 
in a low silver bowl and said, “He’ll be here at four.” 

“Does he like anchovy butter or do his tastes run 
to jam?” asked Miss Sally briskly. “How about 
those little soda biscuits of Della’s, hot and buttery, 
with a slice of bacon between their covers, and in 
some of them, for variety, my own peach jam?” 

“Wonderful,” said Mary Rose absently, then after 
a moment continued suddenly, “I should have told 
him not to come! ” 

“Oh,” remarked Miss Sally impatiently. “Dilly¬ 
dally, dilly-dally! You’re fixing to make a good 
deal of trouble for yourself, Mary Rose. Let the 
man come. He won’t eat you!” 

Mary Rose said nothing. She was very disturbed, 
and very clear only on one point: not to evade and 
not to lie, no matter what it cost her. 

He came at four. He fell in love with Miss Sally 


170 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


and she somewhat with him. The tea was perfection, 
the soda biscuits dreams that melted in the mouth 
and left a moreish feeling behind them. After tea 
was over, Miss Sally slipped out of the room with 
a little murmured excuse. 

“What a perfect person,” said Bob, enthusi¬ 
astically. “I swear, Mary Rose, the way you fall on 
your feet is simply amazing!” 

She ignored this. All through the little tea hour 
she had been studying him, now quite frankly, when 
he wasn’t looking and now quite furtively, when he 
was. He looked thinner, she thought, but very well. 
There was nothing of the lover in his air or bearing; 
he was friendly, happy to be with her, undeniably 
glad to see her—oh, very glad. But of the lover’s 
little engaging awkwardnesses—engaging when his 
love is returned, that is—of the lover’s silences and 
half sentences and clumsy, adorable ways, there was 
not a trace. Mary Rose knew. Even Tom had 
taught her much. Why, she wondered, did she think, 
“even Tom”? That wasn’t quite fair to him, for 
Tom had been a true lover, a faithful lover, always. 

Meantime, she showed Carter her picture and then 
took him into the garden. She could not bear him, 
somehow, to be near her in the small drawing-room 
where they had had tea, not with the little fire on 
the hearth and the sense of peace and quiet and old 
days that came from the very walls. It was a room 
that drew you too close to someone you loved. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


171 


The afternoon was quite warm. Over her plain, 
white serge gown, Mary Rose had thrown a light 
knitted cape of a very marvelous blue. She was 
bareheaded. 

“That’s a wonderful color,” said Carter, touching 
the fringe of the cape as a little wind blew it across 
his hand and they walked slowly down the box- 
bordered paths. “Reminds me of that Madonna in 
Dresden. It’s the Sistine, is it not? You know I’m 
awfully ignorant—just such a color, though. And 
you are a little like a modem Madonna today, Mary 
Rose—quite thoughtful, a little grave, very sweet in 
your white gown and blue cape.” 

There was nothing she could say. He was so very 
dear and so close to her, walking there. She was glad 
of the wind and the free sky over them and thought 
in her heart, childishly and very Mary-Rose-like, 
“Oh, I’m so glad it’s not moonlight!” 

After a moment he said, “Dresden—there’s a 
lovely garden city for you. I wonder how the war 
has touched it. I hope it has not hurt it. You would 
love it, Mary Rose—the houses and the gardens and 
the park. There’s a hunting castle in that park with 
roses all around it—you’d want it for your own, I 
know; and you’d want to sail up the Elbe on a 
steamer on sunny summer afternoons—the lazy, 
silver Elbe.” 

She said politely, “You haven’t been there in a 
good many years?” 


172 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


He laughed out at that. “No. I’m going again, 
sometime. Will you come with me, Mary Rose?” 

There! It had been said—as lightly, as easily 
as that. Said—then suddenly a great burden was 
gone from her breast. The fever of waiting, the 

dread, the expectation-She stood with one hand 

on the back of a bench; the silent fountain was 
quite near them; the little stone Eros with the rather 
delightfully chipped nose seemed to be looking at 
her and waiting. The fountain was sealed but the 
noise of its waters was in her ears. 

He said again, “Will you come with me, Mary 
Rose? My dear, don’t look at me like that. What 
have I said to hurt you so much? Surely, surely you 
knew why I was coming?” 

But there was nothing startled or bewildered in 
her appearance. She merely seemed a bird poised 
for flight, the blue wings of her cape on the point 
of unfurling. Her face was quiet, almost without 
expression; only in her eyes was the look of a deep 
wound. 

“Yes, I knew,” she said. A hard saying. So much 
easier to have evaded it. No, of course not. Why? 
and played a little for time? 

He was puzzled, distressed, at a loss. He came 
closer to her and took her unresisting hand, pulled 
her down upon the bench and sat there beside her, 
still holding her hand in his. 

“Mary Rose, I know what you are going to say. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


173 


You are going to say that you hardly know me, that 
we are practically strangers. That’s all convention; 
it’s not true. Do you suppose I would have told a 
stranger what I told you? Never in this world; 
my heart knew you, back there in the train, in the 
station even, for its own.” 

“I can’t marry you,” she said flatly. 

His hand closed down harder. “Why not? Be¬ 
cause of that Other? Oh, but you needn’t mind, 
Mary Rose. See, I have forgotten—almost. It 
will be some day as though she had never been and 
I need you, your laughter, and your little, warm ways 
and your clever hands and brain and your sunny 
heart. I need you so much.” 

That was so hard an appeal to resist. Needing 
her? But he did not, not really. She said, turning 
her hand in his, “Do you love me, Bob?” 

His face quivered, broke up into lines of tender¬ 
ness. “So much,” he said. 

But she was inexorable. “Not as you loved your 
wife,” she said, very baldly and felt him crouch 
together as if his soul were listening and on guard. 

“I’m not going to lie to you,” he told her. “No, 
but it will come,” he pleaded, “and I want your com¬ 
panionship and your hands of healing. Mary Rose, 
listen. I can give you so much. I’m not trying to 
bribe you, dear, just being honest. We can travel 
—and we can make a home. I want a home, Mary 
Rose, a home and children.” 


174 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


That broke her for a minute. His children and 
hers. She could have cried out with the utter cruelty 
of it. With a sharp gesture, wholly unlike her, she 
pulled her cold hand away and stood up abruptly. 
He stood with her, and they faced each other, a little 
warily, much like enemies. 

“I won’t be proxy,” she told him. “I’m sorry, 
Bob, but it’s not fair to me—or to you. I can’t 
marry you,” she said again drearily. 

He was suddenly boyish in his disappointment. 
He cried out at her, almost in anger, “Can’t! Can’t! 
Why not?” 

And she answered him with the honesty that she 
had determined on, “Because I love you so much.” 

It was all over now; she had said it. She was 
conscious of a sudden deep peace and waited without 
fear or trembling for his answer. 

He moved toward her, checked himself, and then 

said, very low, “Mary Rose-•” She waited. “I 

—I had hoped you cared, a little,” he said quite 
humbly, “enough, but I never dreamed——” 

She smiled at him. “Of course not, but it is so. 
Please go now. There isn’t anything more to be said, 
is there? I couldn’t live on half-loaves, Bob. I must 
be loved and loved and loved —the way I love. I want 
my man to be all mine—every atom—not a thought 
that doesn’t belong to me, not a fibre. I must have 
everything—heart, soul, body. You can’t give me 
that. It’s not your fault. I thank you,” she told 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


175 


him quaintly, wide eyes steadfast on his, “for the 
honor you have done me. But you understand-” 

Under his breath, he repeated, a little bitterly, 
“ ‘Honor’! ” and going to her took both her hands 
in his, kissed them and let them fall. “I under¬ 
stand,” he said, “and you are the most gallant, the 
most crystal-clear woman I have ever known. You 
won’t give me yourself, Mary Rose, but you have 
given me something very priceless—something I 
had lost—my faith in women and my belief in truth.” 

It seemed to her as if his hand went up in a 
gesture of salute although he did not move. His 
eyes saluted her, and then he turned and left her. 

Later she came back into the house. Miss Sally 
was by the fire, a book on her lap, her little slippers 
on the fender. 

“He’s gone,” said Mary Rose. She was dry-eyed 
and serene. 

“I saw him.” 

Mary Rose flung down her cape in a huddled heap 
on a chair. She went to Miss Sally and sat down 
on the hassock by her feet. 

“Now,” she said steadily, “now that it’s over, I’d 
like to tell you if I may.” 

She told her, briefly, without pause or emotion. 
Miss Sally, when the young voice was still, drew a 
deep breath. 

“That was right, Mary Rose,” she said. 

“It was hard.” 



176 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


The other woman nodded. “Very.” 

Mary Rose turned and hid her face in the silken 
lap. “Oh, oh,” she moaned in a sudden surge of 
reaction, “what must he think of me?” 

“He thinks nothing but lovely things. If he thinks 
otherwise he simply doesn’t matter. I like that 
young man, Mary Rose, but I love you. My dear, 
don’t cry like that. You did the brave thing and the 
difficult thing, anything else would have been cow¬ 
ardly and mean and—unwomanly. There—there—” 
She stroked the abased small head and shut her 
own lids over the mist in her eyes. As she felt the 
girl grow quieter under her touch and in the silence 
she said, smiling into the fire, “If all women were 
like you, in every crisis—truthful and not counting 
the cost to themselves—what a race we would be— 
heroic, a modern heroism. Pride, coquetry, the lady 
who eludes, the gentleman who pursues, all catch¬ 
words, my dear—I think we are fast leaving them 
behind us. Kiss me, honey, and go up and bathe 
the poor eyes. I’m not going to counsel you to for¬ 
get, that would be foolish and dishonest. I want you 
to remember and be glad that you had courage.” 

Mary Rose sat up and rubbed at her wet lashes. 
“I am glad,” she said. “I’ll always be glad except 
in moments when I’m just a throwback to those other 
women of all ages. And there’s a lot ahead of me, 
Miss Sally, work and all the world and summer com¬ 
ing and friends like you-” 



CHAPTER XIV 


Mary Rose was back again at Five Chimneys. It 
was mid-February and there was nothing further for 
her to do until the spring when she must execute 
Amos Brent’s commission. Dean, to be sure, had 
got her some illustrating to do. He found that she 
had a sort of knack at illustrating of an almost semi¬ 
cartoon nature, and it occupied her time nicely and 
swelled her now very prideful bank account. She 
was happy to be home with the family. They had 
missed her so much. Miranda almost went cat- 
mad in an effort to express her relief that the prodigal 
had returned. She ran, that Nonsense Cat, up the 
furniture and over mantels and sat in large bowls 
with her tail curled about her and purred as loud 
and strenuously as any kettle and was always under 
Mary Rose’s feet. 

Lou Perkins was finally in New York with the 
obliging Village cousin; Tom was busy with spring¬ 
planting plans but quite nice, Mary Rose thought, 
when he allowed himself to be seen; Dean came 
rarely for he was engrossed with his work, and a 
little, Mary Rose was sure, with small Miss Perkins 
who wished to “see the town” under proper guidance. 
The days passed swiftly and happily enough. If 
Mary Rose had altered, her parents gave no sign that 
177 


178 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


they noticed. If they talked to each other, anxiously 
and lovingly in the sacred confessional of the marital 
bedchamber; if they planned happy surprises for her 
and tried to be even a little more tender than was 
their custom her life long, Mary Rose never knew. 
Had she guessed, and she would have if she 
were not at the moment so engrossed with her own 
thoughts, she would have been grateful. If any girl, 
in her love-fret, has cause to be that, it is the rare 
daughter whose parents are discretion itself, who 
neither spy nor pry nor ask questions. 

In the spring, too, Dean and Mann had promised 
Mary Rose her exhibition. She looked forward to 
that with some trepidation and much eagerness. She 
worked hard for herself as well as for the magazine 
which had ordered the illustrations. 

Carter had written: “What shall I say to you, 
Mary Rose? I could say nothing then, nothing 
lasting, nothing that could express what I was feeling 
and thinking. Are you sorry you told me? Ah, 
don’t be—Little Painter of Memories. You have 
given me the loveliest memory of all. I shan’t for¬ 
get your brave eyes and your dear little cold hands 
and your voice. I’m so honored, my dear, that you 
love me and I wish with all my heart that I loved 
you the way you want me to. See, I am quite brutal 
about it, am I not? I don’t think I have ever loved 
—like that. With Claire it was all just a madness, 
passion and worship and half awe, very boyish and 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


179 


very real, but, perhaps, a dream. The way things 
happened seemed to kill in me the power to let 
myself go like that again, but I think you want 
even more than I gave her. It is strange; if Claire 
had really been my wife, if she had died and I had 
buried her, I think that some day I would have loved 
again. That’s an odd thing to say; I can’t explain 
it. You see, the dream would have been fulfilled 
and then over with—except in memory and, being 
a man, like other men, there would probably have 
been another dear woman sometime, somewhere. 
But this way—I don’t know. It’s as if she had 
struck a blow at all the great emotions and left only 
the saner, simpler, smaller ones to function. 

Don’t go believing that I don’t care for you. I 
do. If ever you want me I will come to you from 
the ends of earth. You have made me, in some 
curious way, so happy; and because I am grateful 
and because I owe you so much, I am going to do 
what you want me to do— work. I am going to make 
the plans for the summer camp for boys I spoke of. 
It may lead to other activities. Who knows? Jabez 
is back of me, in this. I have told him about us; 
I know you will not mind his knowing. I think that 
you must realize that he very much wanted us to 
come together in the love-relation. He had you 
all chosen for me from your very first letter, he 
tells me. Don’t be angry that I confided in him. 
He is awfully fine and cares so much for us, for us 


180 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


both. You may hear from him for he understands. 

Mary Rose, dear, think of me as kindly as you 
can. Grant me this one thing—that I gave you 
honesty in return for your own. If I cannot sign 
myself, in your deep sense, your lover, I can at least 
sign myself, with all my heart, 

Your friend, 

Bob.” 

When weeks had gone by she answered him: 
“Thank you for your letter. I shall always be glad 
I loved you. I shall be happy thinking of you in the 
work you really care for and proud to think that, a 
little, I helped to bring it about. I have heard from 
Jabez. No, I do not mind his knowing. He is so 
big a part of all the magic, the magic that is you and 
me and all the world about us. Bless you, and be 
happy. 

Mary Rose.” 

From Jabez a little letter had come and a dear 
letter. He had said very little in it and yet so much. 
He had told her that he was sorry, that he was glad, 
that he was grateful to her always for more than 
she knew and begged her to keep in touch with him. 
She did so and the letters that came to her at inter¬ 
vals meant much to her. They were cheerful, 
friendly letters, filled with comprehending affection. 

March passed in a dream of clear skies and high 


MAGIC. AND MARY ROSE 


181 


winds. April came in with golden forsythia for her 
hair and with her white hands busy among the trees 
and bushes—a gaily tearful April, with sunshine to 
attend her. And then came—it always seemed so 
sudden, somehow—the wild, pale foam of fruit trees, 
the little peach trees marching to the Sound with 
rosy spears held high and the pansies showing muti¬ 
nous little faces in the cold frames. 

It was at this time that Mary Rose went to New 
York to interview-Mr. Brent and receive from him 
her final instructions. He had not forgotten her 
entirely, it seemed, although to her comic dismay, 
he seemed to look on her as she entered his office 
with the least, puzzled shadow on his brow. She felt 
a little misplaced for the moment, in his mind, and 
then, abruptly, he had pigeonholed her and motioned 
her to a chair. “Ah, yes—the little painter.” 

She said, afflicted with shyness, “It’s apple- 
blossom season, Mr. Brent.” 

He nodded. “So it is. And you’re ready to go to 
Watville?” 

“Yes.” 

“Now?” 

“If you wish.” 

He flicked at a calendar. “Shall we say the day 
after tomorrow? My secretary will meet you at 
the train and see that you are comfortable. You’ve 
not forgotten that I want the south porch painted 
and the orchard?” 


182 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


He dismissed her a moment after. It was merely 
business to him—perhaps an unusual business but 
still all in the day’s work. Amazed, she thought, 
“To make a business of memories!” and then 
laughed, “but that’s what I am doing.” 

She packed, made her plans and met the secretary 
as bidden. This minion proved to be a pale, clever 
woman, tremendously businesslike herself and with 
some of the very gestures and phrases of her em¬ 
ployer—the office-wife in the flesh. Tickets were 
bought, drawing-room attended to, magazines forth¬ 
coming all in a most practical fashion. 

Mary Rose tried to find out a little more. “Mr. 
Brent often goes to Watville?” 

“Oh, no. I’ve been with him seven years and 
he has never been there to my knowledge. He gets 
away seldom. In the winter he manages to join 
Mrs. Brent at Palm Beach for a week or two. In 
the summer he goes to Newport for a time; then, 
in the fall, he allows himself a week’s hunting in 
Canada. Often he goes to Europe on business.” 

“He wasn’t born in Watville?” pursued Mary 
Rose, who knew very well that he wasn’t. 

“Dear me, no. He is English by birth,” said 
Miss Simpson with an air of pained astonishment 
that anyone should be so ill-informed on important 
questions. 

“Well,” thought Mary Rose, “it’s a mystery to 
me.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


183 


She parted from the severe lady and spent her trip 
in musing on Amos Brent and on herself. She was 
a little downcast. Miss Sally had gone to Europe 
for an indefinite stay, after begging Mary Rose to 
go with her as her guest. How Mary Rose longed 
to go! But it seemed to her very like running 
away, like soaking her heart in new impressions, 
new beauties, new marvels—like trying to forget. 
It was better for her to stay home and work although 
Miss Sally had pointed out that there was plenty of 
work for her as well as instruction overseas. She 
couldn’t leave The Place, however, for so long 
and she couldn’t disappoint Mr. Brent. Maybe he 
did not take the commission as seriously as she did, 
but that didn’t matter. She knew quite well that 
if she had left and not gone through with her part 
of the bargain that, once his mind was made up to 
having the farmhouse painted, he could get a hun¬ 
dred painters to do it quite as well as she. She had 
merely given him the idea in a whimsical advertise¬ 
ment that had caught his eye, that was all. But 
she had a great deal of pride in her promises, a real 
business integrity and so, with tears and sorrow, she 
had let Miss Sally, urgent and reproachful to the 
last, sail away without her. 

“The Mediterranean in spring, Mary Rose, and 
green England in summer! You wretched girl!” 
But Mary Rose had remained adamant. 

Watville was nothing to go into raptures about: 


184 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


a nice old town with wide streets; ugly frame houses 
with cupolas and fretwork; many trees and gardens 
and pleasant-looking people; a Main Street, a Front 
Street, an Elm Drive; some glove factories and, on 
the outskirts, a lake with a group of summer resort 
dwellings, not all of them hideous but the majority. 
Here and there a really nice farmhouse was tucked 
away and covered with vines. 

Mary Rose was met by the caretaker of the Brent 
place, a middle-aged and pleasant man, laconic and 
uninterested, however. She longed for Sam and 
longed again for Nancy when Mr. Terry’s thin wife 
met her at the door with perfunctory courtesy, a 
child with a towhead clinging to her skirts and a 
half-grown girl in the offing. The house was beyond 
Watville, several miles, and lay directly on the road. 
There were acres of fields and woods and a brook 
running through, as she afterwards discovered. The 
house itself was a keen disappointment—hat-boxy 
and uninspiring, white, with green trimmings, well 
kept up but atrociously furnished. She knew as 
soon as she set foot in it that no matter why Amos 
Brent had bought it, he had not bought it to live 
in. Romantically, she had pictured it to herself 
as some secret retreat, restful and simple, to which 
the great man might steal for relaxation and peace, 
for little interludes of sheer quietness in his tumultu¬ 
ous life—a retreat so hidden that even the wonderful 
secretary might not know of its happy uses; but 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


185 


as soon as she laid eyes upon it, Mary Rose knew 
that she had been indulging in fiction and not fact. 

The orchard was the satisfying thing. Apple trees 
planted wide apart with flowers at their feet, and 
now in gorgeous, breath-taking bloom. The south 
porch, she saw—a square little thing, not beautiful 
—gave on this magnificence. She prowled around 
her first morning there and finally decided on a pic¬ 
ture that would be mostly apple trees with a glimpse 
of the porch thrown in for good measure. She would 
have gladly eliminated the porch altogether had it 
not been for Mr. Brent’s expressed wish that she 
include it. 

Mr. and Mrs. Terry looked painstakingly after 
her comfort and the towheaded boy was friendly, 
as was the gangling girl; but Mary Rose thought 
of these people as mere shadows moving about the 
house. They had no personalities as far as she was 
concerned; she was, she felt, quite alone. In a 
way she rather liked it—was glad, after her first 
disappointment, that the house was unattractive, 
that her room said nothing to her, being merely a 
sunny, airy chamber furnished in golden oak and 
matting, with pictures after Landseer on the walls. 
It was a room in which one would not be encouraged 
to dream or linger. She thought of Little Lodge and 
of Miss Sally’s brick house that was a home and of 
The Place. After all, the austere utility of Mr. 
Brent’s house would do her good. 


186 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She painted the orchard in the sunlight and, be¬ 
cause it was so very lovely then, she painted it just 
before dusk when the shadows were long and golden 
and the blossoms no longer laughed out in the sun 
but took on an elfin mystery, became half-toned 
things, delightful and a little wistful. He should 
have both pictures, she thought generously, and, of 
course, for the price of one. She dreamed of doing, 
if she had time, a little picture for herself alone, of 
those trees, pure white and pale pink coral under a 
full moon—for there was a moon. 

In between bouts of earnest work she took walks. 
One memorable walk led her far away from the 
house, following the course of the little, garrulous 
brook deep into the trees. She was not aware that 
she had trespassed beyond the Brent limits until 
finally, warm and healthily tired, she sat down on 
a stump to rest after crossing a turnstile. She then 
became aware that she was being regarded by a pair 
of steady blue eyes, growing, like violets, very close 
to the ground. 

A child, a boy about six years of age, sat upon 
another stump and looked at her, much, she thought 
mirthfully, as the caterpillar at Alice. 

“Hello!” she said. 

“Hello,” said he. “What’s your name? How old 
are you? I like your hair,” he continued amazingly. 
“It’s all curly. My mother’s hair is longer though.” 

“Is it? And where is your mother?” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


187 


He waved a fat arm in a comprehensive gesture. 

“Up to the house.” 

For the first time she saw that she was not far 
from a house, a small house cuddled down in a hollow 
with smoke rising from the chimney. 

“You didn’t say your name!” 

“Mary Rose. What’s yours?” 

“Warrenbentonlawson,” said he in one breath, and 
at that moment Mary Rose heard a light step through 
the underbrush and a voice, a deep lovely voice, 
calling, 

“Warren! Warren! Where are you, you little 
rascal?” 

Warren-with-the-long-name jumped down from his 
perch. Mary Rose saw with a sickening catch at 
her heart that, however gallantly he held the slim 
little body topped with a shining head, his right foot 
dragged cruelly in the clumsy shoe. 

“There’s Mummy,” he confided in a stage whisper 
and raised a clear little treble in a shout, “Here I 
am, Mummy—with Mary Rose.” 

“Mary who?” 

A woman stepped out from behind a clump of 
trees. Mary Rose held her breath and wild thoughts 
rushed through her head. Demeter! Juno! any god¬ 
dess as long as she was goddess enough. 

“I was making friends with your son,” she ex¬ 
plained shyly, “and I am afraid I have trespassed 
on your property. I am staying over at Mr. Brent’s.” 


188 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


The tall woman, stooping to pick up the child 
in the curve of a beautiful bare arm, smiled. 

“Not trespassing. Our place and Mr. Brent’s are 
neighbors. The fences are just—fences. I didn’t 
put them there to keep people out of these woods. 
Mr. Brent’s place is rarely occupied except by the 
Terrys,” she added. 

She straightened up and Mary Rose, beholding her 
more closely, gave a sigh of pure artistic satisfaction. 
Tall, rounded, full bosomed, with a large gracious 
hand, and large beautiful feet, with noble features 
and hair like wheat in the sun, with great blue eyes 
like the sea itself, this woman was a sheer joy to 
look at. After the painted, petulant, flat-breasted 
women of the day, she seemed unreal. Mary Rose 
thought fleetingly of Amos Brent’s wife, the dark 
creature she had met on her first visit to him. She 
could have laughed aloud to think how they com¬ 
pared, or rather how they could not be compared. 

Warren’s mother said, “You’ve walked a long 
way. Please come to the house and have a glass of 
milk and rest awhile. You look quite tired.” 

Mary Rose would have accepted her invitation 
to walk to Rome and there to drink hemlock, so 
anxious was she not to let this vision out of her 
beauty-loving eyes. She answered gratefully, “I’d 
love to if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” 

“I’d be glad,” said the other woman. “We live so 
quietly we rarely see people. I am Magda Lawson.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


189 


Mary Rose murmured her own name and they 
walked on together, Mrs. Lawson carrying the child 
as lightly as though he weighed a mere ounce or two, 
walking, her golden head held high, as goddesses 
walked on Olympus. Mary Rose had a heartache 
of acute pleasure as she watched her. 

The little house was soon reached, a friendly grey 
cottage in which the big kitchen, made attractive with 
faded chintz and blue plates on the spotless walls, 
served as dining and living room. There was a gate¬ 
legged table in one corner and Windsor chairs with 
some comfortable old morris chairs. Into one of 
these Mrs. Lawson motioned her guest while she set 
Warren down and went into a pantry, returning with 
a pitcher of creamy milk and a plate of cookies. 

“Go fetch your little mug, Boy,” she bade the child 
who ran off and, returning, silently watched his mug 
filled, took a brown cooky and disappeared again. 

“Is he shy of me?” asked Mary Rose. 

“Oh, no, he is very friendly and doesn’t know what 
fear is, but he likes to be alone,” said his mother, 
sitting down at the table and sighing a little, quite 
unconsciously. “He’s an odd child.” 

“Your only child?” 

“Yes, now. I had a girl. She would have been 
eleven years old if sh^ had lived. The boy was born 
after his father’s death. He is six.” 

There was a whole life’s tragedy in the few words. 
Mary Rose felt a constriction at her throat. 


190 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“You say you are staying at the Brent place?” 

“Yes, I am painting the orchard for Mr. Brent,” 
said Mary Rose. “Do you know him?” 

The other woman laughed. One saw the laughter 
flutter like a caged silver bird in her full white 
throat, which rose as graciously from the square neck 
of the faded blue gingham dress she wore as if 
it had been a presentation robe, court train and 
all. 

“No indeed. No one does. He is a legend here. 
I have only lived here since my husband’s death, 
but as far as that goes no one else seems to know 
him from the oldest inhabitant down. The Terrys 
do, of course, but they met him in New York. 
Mr. Terry went there in answer to an advertisement 
for a caretaker. The real estate broker—he knows 
him, I suppose, but he has long since moved away. 
I believe that Mr. Brent has owned the place for 
many years and never been near it. It used to be 
a summer boarding house, you know.” 

“I didn’t know,” said Mary Rose, “but that ex¬ 
plains it.” 

The other woman flashed her a quick smile, cherry- 
red lips, full and satin-soft, parting over perfect 
teeth. 

“Does it? What a very ugly house it is, and it 
could so easily be made lovely.” 

They talked a little of the country and the woods 
and the weather but more-of the boy. When Mary 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


191 


Rose got up to go she felt as if she had found a 
friend. It occurred to her suddenly that while she 
had many women friends, she had no real friend 
except, perhaps, Miss Sally, and this woman was 
of her own generation, not as young as she herself, 
thirty-one or two certainly, but still of her own 
people. 

She had a swift, insane impulse to say to her, “You 
are—different. Cool and warm alike. Peaceful as 
earth and as rich. I need you. Come, let us swear 
an eternal friendship.” Instead, she said, pleadingly, 
“Won’t you come over and see me—you and War¬ 
ren? The orchard is so beautiful now. And then,” 
she confessed, “I am quite lonely for people.” 

“We’ll come,” said her hostess. 

And that was the beginning of more magic: magic 
of friendship, magic of two minds meeting, magic 
of growing affection, sweet and sane and sunny, 
magic of a little child, his heart opening as a bud 
opens to the heart of Mary Rose. 


CHAPTER XV 


She saw Magda Lawson every day. They drifted 
into a habit of taking their luncheon out in the woods 
together; sometimes Magda brought the basket, 
sometimes Mrs. Terry put up a “snack” for them. 
Every evening Mary Rose went to the grey cottage 
and sat with her friend until nine or ten o’clock, when 
Terry, returning from the town where he nightly 
went for mail and the usual drug-store gossip, would 
pick her up and drive her back to Brent’s by the 
main road. 

Mary Rose thought that she had never met a 
more satisfying person than Magda. The odd thing 
about their friendship was that they knew only sur¬ 
face things about one another as far as outside mat¬ 
ters went. Of Magda, Mary Rose knew she had 
married early, had lost a child, had no parents, was 
widowed and in straightened circumstances. Of 
Mary Rose, Magda knew her Long Island setting, 
her complement of family, her ambitions, no more. 
Mary Rose noticed, perhaps, that Magda spoke of 
her dead husband seldom and never offered to 
exhibit a picture of him. But she was not interested 
in the late Mr. Lawson; she was interested only in 
Magda and in that gay-grave child, Warren, a truly 
elfin nature, but one with the human qualities of 
affection and loyalty. 


192 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


193 


Magda had confessed to no more than a high- 
school education; but she was remarkably well- 
informed on modern and ancient art. Mary Rose 
spoke out, one day, her astonishment at this. 

“Of course, you have a natural intuition and appre¬ 
ciation; but you know things that only come through 
study, Magda,” she said. “Surely you never got that 
in any Watville—or wherever it was—High School ? 55 

Magda drew her golden brows together. “No. 
But there was a time when I studied a little—books, 
you know, and pictures, at home. I lived with 
my people at the time. There was a very hospitable, 
elderly man who had a wonderful library and pic¬ 
ture gallery. His collection was famous. I had the 
run of his house and so I picked up a good deal, 
but afterwards, I no longer had any use for such 
knowledge really and I dropped it. I am rusty as 
it is . 55 

The sunlight orchard was painted—finished; the 
orchard at dusk was very nearly so. Mary Rose 
felt she had no longer any excuse to linger on, 
eating Mr. Brent’s food and sleeping in the golden- 
oak bed that he had provided for her. But she must 
do that moonlight picture—why should she only 
paint other people’s memories? Why not her own? 
Her memory of Little Lodge had gone to Bob and 
she possessed several half-finished sketches, in her 
sketchbook, of Boxwood—one or two of the garden. 
She had almost torn them up but had let them stay 


194 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


there between the green covers. After all, why 
shouldn’t she remember that? 

During her stay she had written Mr. Brent faith¬ 
fully and had had short answers via the impeccable 
office-wife. She had recently let him know that her 
little “job” was nearly over, that she would be back 
very soon. 

Magda, coming over in the late afternoon, found 
her working on the twilight picture. Warren was 
not with her, and although Mary Rose had seen her 
as recently as the luncheon hour, she glanced at her 
searchingly, instantly noting the unaccustomed cloud 
on the beautiful face. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“Everything—but I have been expecting it for 
a long time.” 

Mrs. Lawson plucked an open letter from her 
capacious gingham pocket and, sitting down on the 
grass, her back against a great tree, lifted troubled 
eyes to her friend. 

“We have to leave the cottage. It has been sold. 
I knew all winter that there was a possibility of it 
but, somehow, I didn’t worry. Now, the people want 
to get in by the first of June and that means that 
Warren and I must search elsewhere for quarters. 
I have looked around here, I admit, but there isn’t 
anything at all—nothing suitable, that is. Warren 
must go to school. I don’t care about having him 
start in the lower school here; he is such a difficult 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


195 


child and ahead of his years—he reads and writes 
quite well. But this grammar school is not inter¬ 
ested in the individual; it is rather big for one thing. 
I don’t mean that I wish to guard him from contact 
with other, stronger children, but, well, there must 
be another method. Our income is very small, Mary 
Rose. If there were only something I could do to 
supplement it—but I couldn’t leave Warren to the 
care of paid strangers, I am too afraid for him.” 

Mary Rose jumped up from her camp stool to the 
imminent peril of her easel. 

“Come home with me while you decide, Magda! 
That great barn of a house! Oh, Mother and Dads 
would love you and Warren, Please come! I am 
going to take a vacation after this picture is finished 
and we can have such a good quiet time and you 
can decide what to do. Perhaps there would be 
something for you in Wellport. I even have an 
idea, but I shan’t tell you as yet; it must wait. If it 
worked out, you could stay with us, don’t you see? 
Warren would be so safe with us, with Mother. 
She adores little boys and they, her. Oh, Magda, 
say you will come!” 

The blue eyes misted and Magda rose to her feet 
and put her hands out to the younger girl. 

“What a dear you are! You would actually take 
us into your home, your heart—two strangers! ” 

Mary Rose flushed and stammered a little. It was 
hard for her to say what she wished to, to Magda; 


196 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


she was a little in awe of her, always. There was 

something about her- Here, if she were to gain 

a friend forever, honesty must count too. 

“Listen, Magda. I know what you are thinking. 
It isn’t so! I want you to come because I truly 
love you and Warren. I have never had a friend 
such as you might be to me; I want you for that 
friend. You—you rest me; you lift me up somehow, 
on wings. I can’t explain. Come for a little, for 
a visit only and then see if you care to stay. For 
Warren’s sake come, if not for your own and for 
mine.” 

Magda looked at her for a full minute. Then she 
smiled over the great tears that rolled slowly down 
her cheeks. 

“Thank you, Mary Rose. We’ll come.” 

“Then that’s settled,” said Mary Rose, briskly. 
“I was going to leave the first of the week. Mr. 
Brent provides a whole drawing-room for one little 
person. Won’t you and Warren share it with me?” 

Magda laughed. “How fast you go! We couldn’t. 
There is packing to be done and all that sort of 
thing; but we will be with you by the first of June, 
if, when you have seen your family, you are sure it 
will be quite all right with them.” 

“Anything I do is all right with my family,” said 
Mary Rose modestly. “They are very well trained.” 

She was so happy that she could have danced there 
in the orchard, in fact, after Magda had gone and 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


197 


she was alone in the slow dusk with one star shining, 
she did dance. 

It was here that Amos Brent found her. He was 
on his way upstate in his big English motor and 
had, impulsively, for him, decided to stop off for half 
an hour and see for himself how things were getting 
on. He had with him his very extra personal secre¬ 
tary—a man—and his chauffeur. Both were aston¬ 
ished as, several miles out of Watville, on another 
highroad, he ordered them to make the detour. 
Mary Rose had not heard the car purr up to the 
door on the road and had no intimation that Brent 
was near until he stepped, bareheaded, into the 
mass of bloom and caught her red-handed, or rather 
light-footed, singing to herself in a tuneless fashion, 
and dancing a little jig under the trees. 

“Well, Miss Rogers.” 

She dimly saw his face and great, heavy figure 
and a sudden terrible embarrassment flooded her. 

“Mr. Brent!” 

“In the flesh. I am on way to the farthest wilds 
of New York State. Do you suppose Mrs. Terry 
could give us, me and my companions, a bite of 
supper?” 

He already knew that she could, having inter¬ 
viewed the startled Mrs. Terry, but preferred to 
consult Mary Rose as nominal hostess. 

That young lady now flew to the house with Mr. 
Brent beside her, more out of countenance than 


198 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

she cared to admit. But supper arrangements made 
and bedrooms inspected in case they decided to 
spend the night, she felt better. Terry and his wife 
and their children were agape. Jove descending in 
a shower of gasoline could not have amazed them 
more. The legend in which they themselves only 
partly believed after one interview and many com¬ 
munications and a monthly check had actually 
materialized. 

Mary Rose and Mr. Brent had supper alone. It 
appeared that the silent secretary, a man of forty 
odd, had friends in Watville and now purposed call¬ 
ing on them. The chauffeur was made comfortable 
in the kitchen and the proud motor housed in the 
humble barn. What it thought of its plebeian sur¬ 
roundings it never said, but it must have thought 
something for in sheer disgust it fractured a rib 
or some other delicate part of its interior and refused 
to go farther. Perhaps, on the other hand, it liked 
the rural garage as a change from its urban setting 
—as a rest cure. At any rate, Brent and retinue had 
to spend the night there. 

Mary Rose began to like him very much. He was 
most interesting during supper, quite charming in 
fact, and she listened spellbound to tales of three 
continents. In his turn he was much taken by the 
girl herself. What a little thing she was, so sunny 
and happy! He laughed to himself as he thought 
of that moment in which he had found her, execut- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


199 


ing her pas seul under the apple trees—a natural 
human being. How few of them there were! 

The two pictures were shown to him. “Lovely!” 
he said, and, after a minute, “More than I expected. 
Which is mine?” 

“Both of them—if you care for them,” she said. 

“Both? But I only ordered one!” he reminded 
her quizzically. 

“I know,” said Mary Rose, “but—well, I couldn’t 
resist it, you see; and I took up the time that be¬ 
longed to you by painting a little thing all for myself, 
so if, in payment for the extra bed and board, you’ll 
accept the second picture, I should be very happy.” 

“At the price of the first?” 

“At no price,” said Mary Rose, quite seriously 
angry. “It’s—it’s payment, as I told you.” 

He laughed then, and said, “I prefer to think of 
it as a gift, but if I accept it I shall have to set my 
own price on the original picture, you know!” 

She looked at him a little startled but he only 
shook his head and said with a smile, “No contra¬ 
dictions, I’m not used to them.” 

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said humbly and 
sincerely. “You see you’ve given me so much— 
this lovely time here and two friends.” 

He raised his bushy eyebrows at that. 

“Not—my good caretaker and his wife?” 

Mary Rose dimpled. “They’re nice, too—but I 
wasn’t thinking of them.” 


200 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

She told him about Magda and about little War¬ 
ren. His impassive, fleshy face softened as she de¬ 
scribed the boy. 

“And you’re going to take them home with you? 
People you don’t know?” 

“Oh,” she flashed at him, “I’m so tired of people 
saying that! They all say it. ‘Why you don’t know 
him—or her—or them’—but of course I do. Don’t 
you ever go by intuition and just natural, instinctive 
liking?” 

“Very rarely.” 

“That’s a pity,” said Mary Rose to the great man. 

“Perhaps.” 

He was silent a minute. “If your friend wants 
work, perhaps I can help her. I have many irons 
in the fire. I suggest that after she has stopped with 
you awhile, you bring her to town to see me. Per¬ 
haps she could leave the boy with you, or near you? 
How about it?” 

Mary Rose was radiant. “She could come to us 
week-ends,” she said, planning ahead as usual. “Oh, 
that would be wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Brent.” 

After she had gone to bed, Amos Brent went out 
into the orchard. The moon was just rising \ it 
was late. He walked under his own trees and 
smoked thoughtfully and wondered a little at him¬ 
self. What on earth had possessed him to come 
back to this place of bitter-sweet remembrance? He 
had sworn never to set foot in it again. How con- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


201 


tradictory a creature is man, even the most logical, 
hard-headed of men. And if he hadn’t wanted to 
remember, why had he ordered that picture painted? 
Coral wouldn’t care, wouldn’t understand; she’d 
laugh if she knew. Well, she’d never know. He’d 
lock the pictures up and let it go at that. Why had 
he bought the damned place, anyway? This Rogers 
girl—funny little thing, such a mixture of sense and 
nonsense. He liked her friendship for the other 
woman. And the child now, poor, plucky little 
fellow! If he had had a son—even a son with a 
little crippled foot—it might have made a difference. 
But Coral had never cared for children, never, he 
thought, since the money started to come in, cared 
for anything but herself and the culture of her lovely, 
useless, sterile body. He sighed heavily and turned 
back to the house. 

In the morning, at breakfast, he said, “Miss 
Rogers, stay on as long as you like and paint as 
much as you like. On your way through town, 
leave the pictures at my office. I will have the check 
there for you. I may not be there, I have to go 
abroad very soon, but—I want to thank you for all 
you have done.” 

“I haven’t done anything,” she told him, “but 
selfishly enjoy myself.” 

He fingered the painting of the sunny apple 
orchard. “ 'Mary Rose—Painter of Memories’. 
Miss Rogers, do you think people ever forget any- 


202 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


thing really important that has happened to them 
—deliberately forget?” 

“Of course not,” she said, wide-eyed. “Memory 
isn’t within our control—altogether. Although,” she 
added, “I think you can change or misplace your 
memories, harden them, I mean, or soften them, or 
veil them, or tuck them away in a secret corner of 
your mind.” 

He said suddenly, standing there in the ugly living 
room, “Mutual memories—I was thinking of them. 
If a man remembered and a woman forgot—the 
loveliest thing that had happened to them both, 
something that promised lovelier things yet and was 
never fulfilled—what then?” 

Mary Rose knew. She remembered the dark, 
bitter woman she had seen in Brent’s office. 

“Sometimes,” said Mary Rose, “a woman—or a 
man—only needs the memory jogged a little. There 
might be dust on it you know, dust of the years. Or 
it might be a little warped from lying idle, or—oh, 
it might be so much. Perhaps she remembers all 
along only hasn’t said so. Maybe he should have 
told her he remembered; there’s so much harm in 
silence.” 

She held her breath. Had she said too much? But 
she hadn’t said anything, really. 

He laid down the picture and turned away. 

“Good-bye—and thank you. Perhaps you are 
right—now that I think of all those other perhapses. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


203 


Life has such a way of building barriers, hasn’t it, 
between people who should be very close?” 

She answered him, from her heart. “But the bar¬ 
riers often are cobwebs. You never know till you 
try to break them down.” 

He smiled at her, clasped her hand, and was gone. 
Mary Rose settled down on the doorstep with her 
chin in her hands. Odd, she thought, that a man 
as forceful as that, a man with such a personality, 
couldn’t make a woman love him—or stay in love 
with him. 

She had sat there perhaps three minutes, watching 
the preparations of the now docile car, when sud¬ 
denly Mr. Brent, with his foot on the running board, 
turned back, and came to her. 

“You can have the pictures at my office next 
week, even if you don’t bring them yourself? I’ve 
decided to give them to Mrs. Brent as an anniversary 
present. She has all the jewels she wants. These 
might possibly appeal to her as—different.” 

Now he was really gone. He waved from the car, 
as did his companion, and Mary Rose watched the 
maroon monster disappear down the road. A little, 
nameless excitement shook her. After all she was 
to have a finger, a painty, poky finger, in Amos 
Brent’s matrimonial pie! 


CHAPTER XVI 


Surprises, in the correct sense of the word, pleas¬ 
ant or otherwise, were a long way from being over 
for Mary Rose. The day before her return to New 
York, coming back from a last, unhurried talk with 
Magda Lawson in the grey cottage, Mary Rose 
became aware that in the dusk, before the door of 
Brent’s farmhouse, a car was standing. She rubbed 
her eyes, bewildered. This invasion of English cars 
on quiet Watville roads—the second in a week— 
was, somehow, unreal. 

The waiting motor cast a little pool of yellow 
light. Its outline was vaguely familiar to Mary 
Rose—a grey car, with a silver girl poised delicately 
on the radiator. She quickened her steps toward 
the house. Vague premonitions stirred her. She 
believed she knew that car. 

On the steps she heard voices, women’s voices. 
One of them emanated from Mrs. Terry as Mary 
Rose saw when she walked over the doorsill. Mrs. 
Terry stood by the table, her hands twisted in an 
apron, and literally gaped with astonishment at the 
woman who stood in front of her, making little, 
feverish gestures with gloved hands, and talking 
shrilly. The caretaker’s wife looked up in relief 
as Mary Rose walked in. 

204 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


205 


“Here’s Miss Rogers, now,” she said and fled 
kitchenward toward her peaceful stove and the 
curious heads of her two children, peering, at dif¬ 
ferent heights from the floor, around the door. 

The woman whirled about—Amos Brent’s wife, 
in a black wrap edged with ermine, a close black 
hat, shot with a diamond arrow, pulled down over 
her eyes, a veil tossed back revealing two dots of 
hard color on her smooth cheeks. 

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. 

Mary Rose was tremendously taken aback. In 
all her little happy life, no one had ever used that 
hard, suspicious, challenging tone toward her. She 
began to long for all the quiet, strong people she 
had ever known, her father, her mother, Jabez the 
unknown, Bob—Bob, above all—Magda, with her 
rich, earth calm. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, standing stock¬ 
still, her brown eyes puzzled and a little frightened. 

“You know what I mean.” 

Mrs. Brent looked at her a moment in silence. 
Then, quite unexpectedly, an unpleasant smile 
stirred her red mouth. 

“You look harmless. Here, sit down.” 

She waved a hand toward a chair and sat down 
herself, on the edge of a rocker, straight and slim in 
her black coat. 

“Let’s get this straight. Your name’s Rogers, 
isn’t it? I saw you once before in my husband’s 


206 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

office. Now what I want to know is this: What are 
you doing here, in my husband’s house? I never 
knew he owned this place until a day ago. Some¬ 
one wrote me of his trip up here and your stopping 
here all this time—never mind who. I was week¬ 
ending at friends’ not very far away and came to 
see for myself. You may as well tell me the truth. 
I’ll sit here until I drag it out of you.” 

Through her definite anger, her vaguer shame and 
her hurt, Mary Rose was conscious of a flash of pity 
and comprehension. “Why, she loves him— dread¬ 
fully!” she thought, “poor, hard, suspicious thing.” 

The color was bright in her cheeks and tears were 
in her throat from pure indignation, but she gentled 
her voice and answered, looking the woman straight 
in the eyes: 

“Your husband—if you are Mrs. Brent, as I 
presume you are—sent me here to paint some pic¬ 
tures for him. He answered an advertisement of 
mine in a magazine and asked me to come to his 
office. That was months ago. I did not see him 
again until recently when I called on him for instruc¬ 
tions. He wished the apple orchard here painted 
in the springtime. Then, as he was passing through 
this section the other day, he stopped in to see 
how the work was progressing. His motor went out 
of commission and he, his secretary, Mr. Davis, and 
the chauffeur, spent the night here.” 

The black eyes flickered uncertainly, looking up 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


207 


at Mary Rose who had chosen to ignore the invita¬ 
tion to sit down, but the mouth tightened. 

“Come again,” said Mrs. Brent with an inde¬ 
scribable vulgarity. “That won’t do at all! You 
don’t think any woman of the world would believe 
that naive tale, do you?” 

Mary Rose’s pity vanished. She felt degraded, 
lowered, horribly ashamed, not of herself, but that 
such women lived and could call themselves of her 
own sex. She longed for a tub of hot water and 
pounds of soap; she wished to scrub from her clean 
skin the measuring look of the eyes that seemed, she 
thought, to leave a little train of mud on her, as they 
traveled over her. 

“I don’t know,” she said, and added childishly, 
“and I don’t care! If women of the world have 
minds like yours, I thank God I’m not of their 
world.” 

The set smile widened. “Is that so? Well, as I 
happen to have a mind like that, you’ll have to 
find a much better explanation. Why,” she said, 
slowly, “you’re not even very pretty.” 

There was scorn in the words and something else. 
A curiously youthful amazement and a throb of hurt 
ran through Mary Rose. It was as if she had in 
that moment been forced against her will to discount 
the beauty of her own slender body and face—as 
if she could not understand. 

Mary Rose took a step forward. At that moment 


208 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


the door opened and breathless, glowing, altogether 
lovely, Magda hurried in. She did not seem, for a 
second, to notice the third woman. 

“Mary Rose, I hurried over. Warren simply 
won’t go to bed until I give you this. He insists that 
you take it home with you.” 

In her hand she held a bit of cardboard, upon 
which was crudely drawn in crayon the likeness of a 
house and some trees, thin trees with stiff green 
leaves. The house was crooked, the chimney 
drunken and abandoned, the windows at an every- 
which-way angle. Mrs. Brent stirred and Magda 
saw her. “I beg your pardon.” 

“Mrs. Lawson—Mrs. Brent,” said Mary Rose, 
quite mechanically. 

If Magda was astonished she did not show it. 
Her warm, quiet eyes rested on the older woman 
and she said, pleasantly, “Mrs. Brent? You came 
to see the pictures? Aren’t they exquisite?” 

Mrs. Brent returned her look. Another suspicion 
seemed to seep through her. Reluctantly she 
appeared to pay tribute to the beauty of this new 
intruder. 

“I did not. I came to ask this of Miss Rogers 
—what she was doing in my husband’s house, a house 
I never dreamed he owned,” she ended bitterly. 

Mary Rose turned appealing eyes to her friend 
and spread her hands in a little, tired gesture of 
defeat. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


209 


“I—I’ve told her, Magda, and she doesn’t believe 
me. She thinks—horrible things. I can’t tell you 
what. She hasn’t said them; she doesn’t have to.” 

Magda understood. She came closer to Mary 
Rose, slipped her arm about her. Tall and serene, 
she looked at Coral Brent with slow, superb scorn. 

“You poor woman!” she said, simply. 

“Thank you!” Mrs. Brent was on her feet. 
“Quite like a melodrama, is it not? I must congratu¬ 
late Amos on his champions. Clever of him to have 
buried so much youth and charm up in these back- 
woods.” Half to herself, she added, “And always 
questioning me! Hypocrite! Too good to be true.” 

Magda gave the slim shoulder under her arm a 
little encouraging squeeze. “Run and fetch your 
pictures, Mary Rose,” she said. “Let me talk to 
Mrs. Brent.” 

Obedient as a child, Mary Rose turned and left 
the room. She was crying as she mounted the steep 
stairs, crying as a child cries, her fists dug in her 
eyes. Once in her room she took the two paintings 
under her arm and then sat down on the bed. Her 
feet felt weighted. Nothing, she thought, could 
induce her to enter that room again, a room suddenly 
made sinister by a woman’s evil thoughts and ter¬ 
rible words. But Magda was waiting for her. 
Wearily she got up and went down the stairs again. 
It was one of her most gallant acts. Honesty must 
be shown here, too; nothing else mattered. 


210 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


In the meantime, Magda was questioning Mrs. 
Brent. 

“Of just what do you accuse Mary Rose, Mrs. 
Brent?” asked Magda. 

“What’s that to you?” 

“Everything. She is a woman and my friend.” 

Under the steady blue eyes, the other woman 
shrank a little. 

“I—I don’t know,” she muttered. “They wrote 
me—a man in his office—it doesn’t matter who, he 
is very loyal to me—he wrote me that she was 
up here, and that Amos had been here. I saw— 
red and came-” 

“I see. And now that you have seen Mary Rose, 
you still ‘see—red’.” 

Mrs. Brent did not answer and Magda went 
on. “She’s gone to get the pictures she painted at 
your husband’s wish. It was purely a business 
arrangement between them. Seeing her, you must 
have known. Why—you’re not a stupid woman, 
Mrs. Brent, you’re clever and worldly wise. Shame 
on you to look at that child and think what you 
have been thinking and to say things to her that 
will mark her for all her life. Shame!” 

Mary Rose was again in the room before Mrs. 
Brent could answer. She went to the table and laid 
down the pictures carefully. 

“They were for you,” she said, quietly. “Mr. Brent 
told me they were to be an anniversary present.” 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


211 


Coral turned her eyes downward. Her hand 
went out and she touched the one from which the 
apple blossoms laughed at her, rosy-white in the 
sun. She said a curious thing. 

“Why—they were just like that! ,} 

The weight fell from Mary Rose’s heart. All the 
pity, all the understanding came back again. She 
said, softly, as if fearing to break a spell, “When?” 

It was a curious scene, the three dissimilar women 
in the little ugly room: Mary Rose, with a sure, 
shining triumph in her reddened eyes; Magda, stand¬ 
ing motionless, rich and wonderful as the soil, wait¬ 
ing; and the woman in black with her painted lips 
moving dreamily over the answer. 

“The spring we were here-” 

“You have been here before?” 

So deep she was in her own dream that the ques¬ 
tion did not arouse her. Instead she replied to it 
as if answering her own heart. “Yes. It was a 
boarding house, you know. I came up during a 
vacation from the school where I substituted and he 
was here.” 

It was all so clear to Mary Rose. She dropped 
suddenly on her knees by Coral Brent and looked 
up into her face. “You remember! It was to make 
you remember that he had the pictures painted; 
that is why he sent for me. I had advertised myself 
as a painter of memories. Don’t you understand 
now?” 



212 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“No—no-” She held the picture in her two 

hands. “I thought he had forgotten—there, on the 
south porch. He was young then, and poor and just 
beginning and I believed in him. I thought he had 
forgotten. I never even knew he had bought the 
house. When I drove up to it tonight my heart stood 
still. I couldn’t understand. It seemed horrible to 
me, horrible that he should have chosen it as a place 
in which to-” 

“Don’t say it! Don’t say it!” Mary Rose im¬ 
plored her. 

For the first time, Coral Brent looked down at 
her. “I shan’t. I’m sorry—I didn’t know-” 

Magda, with a sudden sunny smile and a deep 
breath, slipped from the room and went out to Mrs. 
Terry. She would not leave Mary Rose as long as 
she might need her but she thought that the need was 
nearly past. 

“Oh, don’t think me prying,” Mary Rose begged. 
“I couldn’t and wouldn’t say it if things hadn’t hap¬ 
pened just as they have, but can’t you see why he 
bought it and why he sent me here to paint his 
memory for him? Can’t you see? All these years, 
waiting for a sign from you and you silent—and 
hard. What was it came between you?” 

The strangeness of the situation struck neither 
woman. They were fighting, both of them: Mary 
Rose, for her belief in the world and in the goodness 
of the world; Coral for her belief in lost dreams. 





MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


213 


“ Business—money—I had never had it, you know. 
It went, a little, to my head. The more he made, 
the more I demanded. And then I loved the power 
of it, his power, my own—and we drifted apart. 
There were never any children. He didn’t seem to 
care.” 

“He did care! He cared terribly. I know. I saw 
his eyes when I spoke to him of Magda Lawson’s 
little crippled boy. He cared with all of him—and 
still more—for you. Do you know what he asked 
me the morning he left? He asked me Tf a man 
remembered and a woman forgot—the loveliest thing 
that had happened to them both, something that 
promised lovelier things yet and was never fulfilled 
—what then?’ Those were his words to me and 
I—I thought of you.” 

Mrs. Brent got to her feet. She had both paint¬ 
ings under her arm. “I’m going. He’s—I know 
where he is. And he is sailing for Europe on his 
return. I think I can catch up with him on the 
road.” 

Mary Rose had risen and stood there looking at 
her. “I won’t beg your pardon,” the other woman 
said, “and I won’t even try to thank you. It all goes 
too deep for that. If you’re right—God bless you. 
If you’re wrong—well, I shall have had my chance 
anyway.” 

Mary Rose said, looking at her steadily, “What 
shall you say to him?” 


214 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


The other woman stepped back. “I—don’t 

know.” 

“Don’t plan it,” Mary Rose urged her swiftly. 
“Don’t plan it. And when you see him, don’t let 
the barriers creep up. I know. It’s so easy to 
think what you’ll say and what you’ll do in the 
first flush of it all and then when you are face to 
face, physically, the glow dies down and you grow 
hard and afraid and take refuge in mental and 
spiritual flight. Oh—don’t say anything , Mrs. Brent. 
Just find him and put your arms around him; just 
hold the pictures out to him and afterwards say, 
T remember.’ ” 

Mrs. Brent, on her way to the door, turned. “You 
little thing! What makes you so wise?” 

Not to Magda the beloved, but to this stranger 
who had wounded her, did Mary Rose make the 
confession, because she knew that here was the time 
to make it. 

“I love someone, too.” 

The other woman put out a hand to her and 
Mary Rose took it in her own. “I hope he makes 
you happy,” she said, and was gone into the dusk 
that was darkness now. 

Mary Rose stood still listening to the purr of the 
motor that was bearing Coral Brent to her husband. 
“O God, please let her find him!” she prayed in her 
heart and shut her eyes on a new memory, the 
memory of a bitter face suddenly grown sweet and 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


215 


hard eyes softened by tears and a wistful, shaking 
mouth. 

Magda came in and found her still standing as 
Coral had left her, her gaze on the open door and 
beyond. 

“She’s gone?” 

“To him.” 

She went to Magda and took her by the arms. 

“Magda! More magic. Do you know for a 
minute I was afraid that it was no longer white magic 
but black; grey, at all events. But it wasn’t so. The 
enchantment held, Magda, the magic was magic 
still!” 

Magda kissed her, a rare caress. “There were no 
evil fairies at your christening, Mary Rose,” she 
said. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Well, Mary Rose was on her way home. Actu¬ 
ated by a certain sense of vicarious sentiment and 
confiding her real purpose to no one, she asked 
Mr. Terry to drive her to the smaller town of Daven- 
dale which she had already learned was the next 
station up the line. She could get her train from 
there and it would be pleasant to tell Dean when 
she saw him that she had not forgotten his own 
commission. A little guiltily, she thought she might 
have spent many afternoons in Davendale and really 
taken a picture home for Dean but it was too late 
now. She looked at a time-table. There were other 
trains of course. 

She would not see Magda again until she eventu¬ 
ally met her in New York, for Magda had business 
to transact with the realty people and with the stor¬ 
age people that very day and could not come to 
see her off, as she had planned. With the romantic 
sensation of dedicating a sentimental hour to a 
friend, Mary Rose bade farewell to the apathetic 
Mrs. Terry and her children and drove over to 
Davendale very early on a sunny morning. She 
told Mr. Terry that a friend of hers had lived there, 
and she wished to go to the house for a time. He 
might leave her there. Mr. Terry, himself by nature 
216 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


217 


incurious, had not lived long enough in that section 
of the country to know the Deans or their ancestral 
mansion. He made the necessary inquiries on reach¬ 
ing Davendale and in due course of time deposited 
Mary Rose at what was still known as the “old Dean 
place.” 

People lived in it Mary Rose walked up the 
path with her suitcases and felt a little foolish but 
the first sight of the fat and friendly old gentle¬ 
man who opened the door reassured her. She ex¬ 
plained, a little shyly, that friends had once lived 
there. She had promised them to call at the house 
before her train went. Would he mind very much? 
The people were named Dean. Did he know them? 

He wore an old straw hat without a crown and 
pushed it back on his head with a plump, well-kept 
hand as he answered. No, he didn’t know the 
Deans, but he knew of them. He had bought the 
place from people called Smith—just a year ago. Of 
course she might look around and welcome. Set the 
suitcases down. Wasn’t it warm for so early in the 
season? She must come into the house and rest a 
bit. His name was Mercer and Mrs. Mercer was 
around somewhere. 

The house was a vision of joy after the Brent 
place. A farmhouse much like her own dear Five 
Chimneys, the same lean-to type, a little smaller 
and painted a lovely, happy shade of yellow with 
white trimmings. The rooms were cool and spacious 


218 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


and well furnished and Mary Rose was glad to sit 
down for a few minutes and look about her. No 
wonder that Dean had felt so en rapport with Well- 
port. 

Mrs. Mercer appeared at length and startled Mary 
Rose by her excessive difference from anything she 
had as yet seen. A small, intellectual-looking woman 
with a low voice and smoldering black eyes. They 
were just through breakfast, it seemed, and Mary 
Rose must have a cup of coffee. Going into the 
many-windowed dining room, she was glad of that 
invitation, for hers was a healthy young appetite and 
the drive over had awakened it from the partial 
coma induced by breakfast at Brent’s. 

Over coffee, she learned about her host—a retired 
bookseller; he’d had a shop in New York. A rather 
famous shop and a rather famous bookseller, as Mary 
Rose afterwards learned. He knew how to make 
himself very fascinating, even in the shabby white 
duck suit and the straw hat which still rested casually 
upon his thick white hair although he was in the 
house. He talked books and authors and first 
editions and Mary Rose hung on his words and 
enjoyed them and him. She noticed, too, that every 
now and then he would look across the old round 
table at his little wife and raise his heavy brows 
in a silent question; that Mrs. Mercer would nod, 
in answer, and bend her dark head down, over a 
fine damask napkin she was darning. Once Mary 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


219 


Rose could have sworn that there were tears in 
her eyes and that she bent her head to hide them. 

After coffee and pone cake and just a touch of 
crisp bacon served by an exceedingly urban maid, 
Mary Rose got to her feet. 

“If I’m to explore a little,” she apologized, “and 
make my train, I’d better be going.” 

“Mind if I come along?” This from Mr. Mercer, 
his broad, kindly face a little flushed and his blue 
eyes as anxious as a good child’s. 

“I’d love it,” said Mary Rose. 

He went out with her, first speaking a word with 
his rather silent wife as he passed her. Mary Rose 
walked with him in the little formal, and the larger 
informal, garden and came by detours to the goal 
she had set, the unused well, not far from the house. 

It would be such fun to show Dean how well she 
had remembered. She had her sketchbook in her 
hand. Now she dug up pencils from the pockets of 
her linen suit and perched herself on a big stump. 

“If you don’t mind-” she said and fell to work. 

Mr. Mercer pulled a pipe from his pocket and 
stuffed it with a big steady thumb. He stood to one 
side and watched her as she worked. Just the 
merest sketch, a matter of very little time, but the 
well was there and the trees beyond and a glimpse 
of the house. Mary Rose looked at it as she finished. 

“I think,” she said thoughtfully, “I can work 
up something from that.” 


220 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


She held it up to Mr. Mercer and he nodded, 
drawing on the pipe. 

“Very nice. ’Most makes you thirsty,” he said, 
laughing, and then added, “Were you up here in 
these parts to sketch—to paint?” 

She climbed down from her stump and, walking 
along by him toward the house, she told him, on an 
impulse, of her self-made “job.” The childlike blue 
eyes shone. 

“I like that. There’s something a little mad 
about it,” he said unusually, “and it will bring you 
in contact with all sorts of interesting people. Since 
I have retired, that’s what I miss—people. They 
used to come to my shop by the hundred, old and 
young, tired and strong, poor and rich; some to 
buy and some to browse; some who wanted books 
for their bindings, some who wanted them for the 
magic between shabby covers. And the men and 
women who made books came in, too. They all 
knew old Hal Mercer. Oh, those were rare days.” 

“Was it—long ago?” she asked him, and he 
nodded. 

“Ten years since I sold out. We traveled some: 
Europe, Asia, Africa; spent a year in California; 
camped for a while in the big woods in the North¬ 
west; were on a ranch for a time. Mrs. Mercer 
gets restless. She won’t stay in any one place long. 

I thought when I bought this place for her she’d 
be happy. She liked it, at first, but she’s not con- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


221 


tented now. We’ll be picking up stakes again and 
taking to the road by next year, I’m thinking. She’s 
a born nomad; there’s Spanish blood in her—gypsy 
blood, I believe. Nothing but children can keep a 
woman like that in one place—contented.” 

Mary Rose said, softly, “You have none?” 

“We had a girl,” he answered. “It was when she 
died that I sold out. She would have been about your 
age, I think. She would have looked like you.” 

A short but understanding silence fell between 
them. They had become friends. 

When they reached the house, Mr. Mercer told 
her he’d drive her to the train in his car. She had 
plenty of time. No one was in the living-room and 
as Mary Rose walked about, waiting, she suddenly 
remembered something else. The oak tree with the 
initial! Poor Dean! She ran lightly from the 
house and back to the well again. Yes, there it was, 
a very massive old oak with great spreading 
branches, feathered in green. She walked around 
it, peering, searching. There they were, the two 
initials, almost overgrown but still visible. “J.D.— 
M.C.” The quick, foolish tears filled her eyes. So 
much love in the world gone to waste: Dean and 
the girl who had not waited; little Miss Sally and 
her broken dream; Tom and his steady, dogged per¬ 
sistence; Mr. and Mrs. Brent—but that was surely 
coming out all right; herself—herself and Bob. 
Wasted? She wondered a little, on her way back 


222 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


to the house. Was love ever wasted? She lifted 
her face to the spring wind and the spring scent and 
the shining of the spring sun. She thought not. 
Nothing good was ever wasted in this best of all 
possible worlds. 

Mrs. Mercer met her before she had reached the 
door and walked by her side silently—a curious 
woman. 

The car was there, Mercer and his straw hat at 
the wheel. Mary Rose held out her hand to her 
strange hostess. “It was dear of you to take me in 
as you did.” 

The tfiin hand of the older woman, smaller than 
her own, dry and a little feverish, clung suddenly. 
“Come back - ” 

She turned, and was gone into the house. Mary 
Rose climbed into the car beside Mr. Mercer. Her 
suitcases were in the back. They moved off down 
the drive to the main road. 

“I h ^rd her,” he said abruptly. “She said, ‘Come 
back.’ If you would—to strangers like us. Would 
you?” 

He did not wait for her answer but slowed up and 
peered down the road with narrowed eyes, eyes that 
were anxious and troubled. “I—I’m worried about 
her,” he brought out finally. “It isn’t natural, this 
brooding and restlessness. She was bound up in Betty 

Junior, / used to call her, because her mother’s 
name is Elizabeth—such a little, sunny thing. She, 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


223 


my wife, always blamed the books, you know. I had 
a batch of second-handers come into the shop. Betty 
was forever in and out after school, turning them 
over. She got scarlet fever. It may have been the 
books, we never proved it. I have never thought 
so. They’re always fumigated, you know.” 

“How old was she?” asked Mary Rose, with a 
heartache. 

“Twelve—long-legged, and a braid down her 
back.” 

They drove for a while in silence. Coming to 
the station he helped her out, took her bags and 
waited while she got her tickets. It was not an 
overnight trip this time. She would arrive in town 
very late at night and would go to Brooklyn to her 
aunt’s, that had all been arranged. She took her 
parlor car ticket and then went out to Mr. Mercer. 

He said, standing there, legs set wide apart, hat 
pushed back, “Dealing with books all those years— 
thirty of them—makes a man realize that nothing 
in life is surprising. Life is stranger than anything 
one reads about it. I’m not a religious man, gen¬ 
erally speaking, but it seems to me as if you had 
been— sent. Will you keep in touch with us? Just 
to please an old man’s whim? When I saw you 
at the door this morning, friendly as the sunshine, 
I said to myself, ‘Here’s the doctor for Elizabeth.’ 
Will you—remember us a little and write us now 
and then?” 


224 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


With tears in her throat, she promised. This was 
more of that universal magic, God’s magic of which 
she and this stranger who was her friend and who 
had come to her for comfort, were a part. She 
promised, grave eyes on his, her hand in his grasp. 
The train came in, snorting, and halted a little 
indifferently at the unobtrusive station. With agility 
surprising in one of his bulk, Mr. Mercer swung her 
aboard and gave her into the charge of a smiling 
porter. As she looked back from the car platform, 
the train moving out, she saw him standing there, 
the old hat off for once, the sunlight on his big head 
with its shock of curly white hair. Her heart went 
out to him—she loved him suddenly. 

It was officially morning when she reached Aunt 
Evie and the little cool apartment on Columbia 
Heights. She was tired and dusty and glad of 
immediate bed after a welcome which was not 
dampened by the unseasonable hour or by the 
appearance of Aunt Evie in one of those forgotten 
garments, a grey Mother Hubbard, and her hair in 
curlers. 

Mary Rose was tucked into bed and the last 
thing she heard was an unnecessary admonition to 
sleep late. It was afternoon when she awoke. 

Sleep, a bath and food were all she had needed. 
She rose, performed her toilet and attacked her 
breakfast-luncheon-tea with vigor and then settled 
down to a long session on the telephone. She made 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


225 


arrangements to meet Dean in town the following 
day, to go to Mr. Brent’s office and to catch the 
three-something home. She telephoned also to Five 
Chimneys to assure her parents that she still lived. 
Then she settled down to a long talk with Aunt 
Evie, a talk which lasted until supper, after which 
they went walking as far as Montague Terrace, 
where they sat on benches and watched the sunset 
light fade over the harbor and the little lights come 
out across the water. Then, because Aunt Evie was 
insistent, they took an open trolley and rode to a 
cool moving-picture house and watched with thrills 
and trepidation the inimitable Douglas do his acro¬ 
batic wooing. 

“I do like to see that young man,” Aunt Evie 
announced on the homeward way. “There’s some¬ 
thing so careless about him. Young men, in my 
day,” she said, sighing gustily, “were more particular 
as to how they risked life and limb. And they do 
say he’s in love with his wife!” she concluded a 
trifle wistfully. 

Mary Rose hugged her right there in the trolley. 
There was something dear and young about Aunt 
Evie. 

In the morning she went to Mr. Brent’s office. The 
pictures had been delivered, of course, and she 
would have preferred not to go at all but to wait 
until he himself sent her the check. She had ex¬ 
plained this to Dean over the wire, told him that 


22 6 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


she had personally seen Mrs. Brent and given her 
the pictures but Dean was harsh and businesslike. 

“You call at that office and collect the cash,” said 
he. “You must learn to be practical, you little 
thing.” 

Obediently she called. Miss Simpson met her 
and handed her an envelope, the chaste folds of 
which probably housed her check. No, Miss Simp¬ 
son said, importantly, Mr. Brent had not returned. 
His secretary had, however, and had brought check 
and note. Mr. and Mrs. Brent were still away. On 
their return they would sail for Europe. 

As Mary Rose left the office she was thoughtful. 
Miss Simpson’s pale eyes had a suspiciously red¬ 
dened look. She knew, of course, as close to him 
as she was, that he and his wife were reconciled. 
That meant something to her—something devastat¬ 
ing and a little bitter. Walking to the tea room 
where she was to meet Dean for lunch, Mary Rose 
shivered, as if a little autumnal chill had crept into 
the sweet spring air. What a life—that pale woman 
slaving there by the side of the great, preoccupied 
man—no, not slaving, but serving and perhaps, quite 
unconsciously, loving—that office-wife, proud, surely, 
that she could do for him, be to him, what a wife, 
however loved, could not do or be; feeling, certainly, 
that she was a part of his life, necessary and vital; 
glad of a word of praise, fiercely loyal, interested, 
wholly surrendered to his business. Here was a 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


227 


clear case of misdirected emotion—this “business” 
woman who should have a real flesh-and-blood 
husband to spoil her and an armful of children to 
worry and enslave and delight her. Poor Miss 
Simpson! Mary Rose could picture it—Amos 
Brent, friendly always to his force, just and exact¬ 
ing and kind, but not caring at all, as long as the 
work was accomplished. 

She felt a little depressed as she walked into the 
Blue Goose and looked about for Dean. But he was 
not there. Instead, Henry Mann rose to greet her 
from a small' table. 

“Don’t look so downcast,” he said gaily. “You 
wound me to the quick. I am a mere proxy for our 
giddy mutual friend. Truly, it’s not his fault. He is 
desolate and threatens to descend upon you at Well- 
port. Something came up—even artists have busi¬ 
ness, you know—and he couldn’t get away. He 
hopes to be at your train but is most uncertain.” 

Mary Rose was conscious of a disappointment that 
was disproportionately keen. She had wanted to 
tell Dean “all about it,” to show him the sketch 
and promise that better things should grow from it, 
to tell him about Magda and Warren-boy and the 
dear Mercers in his old house—particularly about 
the Mercers. Although to no one, she thought, 
except perhaps to that unknown, most understanding 
person Jabez Jones, could she tell of the spell that 
held them, the sorry, burdening spell. But there 


228 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


would be time for all that and she could talk better 
at home. 

Meantime, here was Henry Mann with his good 
smile and affectionate eyes, and she was hungry 
again, and genuinely happy to be with him. Their 
talk was all of the exhibition—her exhibition—which 
was set for June. Perhaps that time was not the best 
but it would be a start and it was better than putting 
it off until the fall. When they rose from the table 
there was just time to catch a taxi and get to the 
Pennsylvania Station and make the train. Dean 
was not there. 

On the train she remembered the check and the 
note. The check she unfolded with a little trepida¬ 
tion. She hoped, oh, she hoped that he had under¬ 
stood her, that the sum written down would be the 
one that had been originally specified, that he had 
not paid for the two pictures. She didn’t want him 
to do that; it would spoil something. 

He had not. He had understood. The check 
was drawn for the original figure. And there was 
a little note with no formal beginning, written with 
a leaky fountain pen on hotel paper. 

“You know how we thank you, both of us. We 
are going to Europe very soon, perhaps for a year. 
When we come back you must let us see you. Coral 
says she could not now, not yet, and that you will 
understand. She says you will understand when 
she tells me to send you her love. God bless you. 

Amos Brent.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


229 


Mary Rose put the note back into the envelope. 
She was happy enough to sing—or to cry. “But 
after all,” she thought humbly, “Magda did it, as 
much as’I.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Mary Rose found welcome waiting her at Five 
Chimneys. She also found a family of kittens, which 
were presented to her one by one by the proud 
maternal parent. They were cuddlesome kittens, 
grey with black markings and white chests. One, in 
particular, delighted Mary Rose for it possessed a 
perfect monocle of black which gave it a rather raf¬ 
fish air. But Mary Rose mourned a little over 
Miranda, that Nonsense Cat. It appeared so 
strange a thing to see her settled and domestic, busily 
engaged in supervising morning baths and the re¬ 
quired number of feedings. As for the kittens, Mary 
Rose would not hear of any lethal doings. There 
was plenty of room on the farm, she stated firmly, 
and Miranda’s progeny should be allowed, each one, 
its place in the sun. 

Not only kittens but letters awaited her. There 
was a letter from Miss Sally, on her way to England 
and one from Jabez which told her how Bob’s sum¬ 
mer-camp plans were progressing. Tents had been 
ordered, clearings made, a rough shack run up for 
dining; later there would be more permanent build¬ 
ings erected. He already had a troop of youngsters 
selected and the first of July would see them up 
there, overrunning the shores of the lake, plaguing 
230 


i 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


231 


Sam and Nancy, ruining, so Jabez pessimistically 
remarked, Little Lodge. From Bob himself she 
heard not a word. She was disappointed—she was 
glad—she didn’t know what she was. 

Her first night at home she told her mother and 
father about Magda Lawson and the little boy. Mrs. 
Rogers smoothed out her pretty new voile, donned in 
honor of the prodigal painter’s return, with careful 
hands and David drew thoughtfully at his pipe, his 
noble head almost obscured in smoke. 

“I’ve asked them down for as long as they will 
stay,” said Mary Rose. “They should be here soon 
—by the fifteenth. You’ll love them both.” 

She made no apologies; she took for granted that 
her friends were the friends of her family. There 
was nothing careless or inconsiderate about this atti¬ 
tude which was characteristic of her. It was simply 
that she had perfect confidence in her parents; she 
felt them back of her all the time. Perhaps that was 
why Mary Rose had toward the world in general so 
gallant and trustful an air. There is a feeling of 
sure security which comes only from the knowledge 
that one is a beloved child whose parents are unfail¬ 
ing in counsel and understanding. Add to this a 
wise, tender, careful upbringing and the result is a 
happy, useful human being. 

David nodded thoughtfully. “You did right, 
Mary Rose,” he said. “A summer at The Place will 
do the little chap a world of good.” 


232 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


'“I thought/’ further announced Mary Rose, “that 
if Magda does get work through Mr. Brent perhaps 
she would leave little Warren with us. She couldn’t 
have him in town, all alone all day, and he could 
go to school here or I would teach him myself. Of 
course we would have to let her pay a little board 
for him. She would never consent otherwise.” 

“Time enough for that part of it when she leaves 
him,” Mrs. Rogers remarked with some severity. 
“That big room upstairs with the four windows— 
that would be just the nursery for him. We’ll fix 
it up nicely. She could have the smaller room off of 
it—there’s a bathroom between.” 

Mary Rose nodded. It was as she had thought. 
Her mother always understood before she, Mary 
Rose, had time merely to suggest. Bless her! She 
thought of that other mother, the woman in Daven- 
dale with the tragic eyes and close, straight mouth— 
a mouth, Mary Rose believed, made for kissing the 
soft little necks of babies, a mouth that must have 
once been full and tender with laughter in its curves 
and healing in its caresses, tortured now into that 
straight line of repression. Mary Rose sighed and 
told her listening family of her trip to Dean’s old 
home and what she had found there. 

Mrs. Rogers sat up very erect in her rocker. 
Into the smooth cheeks crept a little flush. “Poor 
woman,” she said,, and added generously, “you must 
do all you can for her, Mary Rose.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


233 


She looked across the room at her husband who 
nodded. In her eyes was a message plain enough for 
him to read. “We have lost children, David. Sup¬ 
pose it had been Mary Rose?” 

He said, comfortably, “It seems to me that I have 
heard of Mercer—that I can remember seeing his 
shop. Let me see, must have been fifteen years ago. 
Do you remember, Mary Rose, Mother and I got 
you that $et of Louisa Alcott you wanted so much? 
Yes, I recall it well now. A fine old shop it was, 
very big and crammed with books. There was a 
lot in the paper when he retired. Seems he was 
something of a landmark in those days and parts. 
I believe he made a good deal of money, investments 
or something, and that the people who bought the 
shop paid a pretty stiff price for the name and good¬ 
will.” 

“I must write them,” said Mary Rose. “Perhaps 
they would take a trip down here sometime.” 

Before she saw Dean again she had time to work 
up the hurried little sketch into the picture she had 
dreamed of. She could hardly wait to show it to 
him, and, childlike, concealed the possession of it 
from him in her letters. Before he came to Well- 
port again, Magda and Warren had arrived. 

Mary Rose met them in New York, gave them 
luncheon and took them straight through to Five 
Chimneys. Warren was trembling with the excite¬ 
ment of the first real journey he recalled, his eyes 


234 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


like two sapphire stars, his cheeks rivaling the June 
roses and his small hands folded tightly, one inside 
the other. Arriving at The Place, he was in¬ 
stantly won to a sort of hero worship of big, kind 
David and, of course, was an immediate lover of 
David’s wife, who knew so well how to deal with 
little boys. He was allowed little more than a tan¬ 
talizing glimpse of Miranda and her kittens. He 
must be fed farm milk and bread and a supper 
cereal and a custard that was like an angel’s dream 
of what a custard should be. And then to bed in the 
big room that was so sweet smelling and somehow 
not strange to him at all. 

Magda was as quick to fall in love as her son. 
And from the moment she stepped out of the car 
into, literally, the arms of her hostess, she was 
accepted as one of them. Long after she had gone 
to bed, tired from her trip and a little worn out 
with gratitude, Mrs. Rogers held her husband and 
Mary Rose fast to £ing the praises of the new guest. 

“But,” she concluded sagely, “she won’t be a 
widow long. Mark my word on it. Men aren’t all 
blind yet. Funny, Mary Rose, that she has never 
told you anything about her husband.” 

Before Mary Rose could answer, David had inter¬ 
vened. “I don’t think it’s funny, Mother,” he con¬ 
tradicted. “It’s easy to see that that girl has had a 
bad time. She’s too young to be as set as she is— 
calm, I mean, and sort of patient. Yes, she’s had 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


235 


trouble and gotten over it but it has matured her 
before her time. I take her to be one of these silent 
women—not like my chatterbox girl there, ready to 
tell her life story to the butcher boy on the corner.” 

“A happy life story,” Mary Rose reminded him. 
“That makes all the difference.” 

“Maybe so,” he went on, smiling at her, “but most 
of the women who’ve had their trials—especially 
with one of us poor blunderers of men—are only 
too anxious to sob it all out on the nearest shoulder. 
But this Magda—she’s quiet. She has dignity, more 
as the women I used to know had it.” 

Mary Rose made a long face. “When you’re 
through slamming me-” she began in mock re¬ 

proach. 

Her father held out his big hand to her, and 
she went to him obediently. 

“I wouldn’t change you for a million Magdas,” 
she was informed, as he pulled her down on his 
lap, “and you know that. But I like your friend, 
Mary Rose; she has strength.” 

For the next few days work and letters and every¬ 
one went by the board while Mary Rose introduced 
Magda to her own country. Magda was a tireless 
walker and passionately devoted to the beauty of 
still, country woods and ways. She was particularly 
happy because there was “real” water. She had 
never lived near the salt water, she told Mary Rose, 
as she began to make longing plans for warm weather 



236 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


and swimming lessons. She thought that the salt¬ 
water bathing would do Warren good. Handicapped 
by his deformity, he would never make much of a 
swimmer, but he was a fearless child and would soon 
learn to splash around and lie in the sun on the sand 
and soak his hungry little pores in salt and sun. 

She, Magda, was quietly, deeply grateful, not only 
to Mary Rose but to the understanding older people. 
She told them so the very night of her arrival, in still, 
unhurried words with all her big heart in her eyes. 
After the long, lonely years in the grey cottage with 
her boy, she was grateful for people who spoke her 
language and comprehended so beautifully. 

Dean came to Wellport about a week after 
Magda’s arrival, came without a word of warning, 
flung himself off a dusty train and into a very ancient 
hack and landed, sure of a welcome, in time for 
supper. Mary Rose had not recently heard from 
him, through her own fault, as his apologetic letter 
to her after she had missed him in New York had 
gone unanswered. Magda was putting Warren to 
bed and Mary Rose was alone in the living room. 
David was out on the farm, Mrs. Rogers looking 
after the supper. Mary Rose looked up from the 
congenial task of arranging great creamy peonies as 
the door opened with no ceremony at all. 

“Why in thunder didn’t you write?” Dean’s an¬ 
noyed voice preceded him. “Were you mad because 
I didn’t feed you the day you came to town?” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


237 


She dropped the flowers and flew at him, wet 
hands seizing his. “I am glad to see you! Why 
didn’t you call up and let us meet you?” 

“Well,” he said, dropping a small bag, “if you 
were mad, you know, you wouldn’t have let me come. 
I figured if I came, this way, you would be too polite 
to turn me out; besides, I had to come. Your long- 
lost friend, Lou Perkins, found Greenwich Village or 
the weather too warm for her and has returned to 
the bosom of her family. I escorted her down.” 

“Come right here,” said Mary Rose without much 
attention to his explanation, “I have something for 
you.” 

She dragged him over to the bookcase and plucked 
from the top of it a small canvas which she handed 
to him. 

“I went to Davendale; I didn’t forget. There’s 
your well and—a glimpse of the oak tree.” 

He took it, looked at it and then at her. “You 
remembered? Mary Rose, who taught you to be so 
dear?” 

She saw that she had stirred some genuine emotion 
in him and hurried to cover it. 

“You asked me for it,” she reminded him. “Why 
should I forget? The nicest people live in your old 
house, John, people named Mercer—an elderly 
couple. They took me in and gave me breakfast and 
were as friendly and as hospitable as old friends. 
I-” 



238 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Warren says he didn’t kiss you good night— 
enough,” laughed Magda at the doorway. “May 
he come in and make up for it?” 

At the sound of her voice Dean, whose back was 
to the door, swung around. She stood there tall and 
laughing, in her arms the drowsy, lovely child, his 
long night-drawers hiding his deformity. Her strong 
arms held him cradled, his little face was pressed 
close against the fine white column of her neck. In 
his bedtime romp, he had pulled loose her hair and 
a coil of it, golden and warm and ruddy, had escaped 
in confusion. She was a little tanned and very 
rosy. 

The picture slipped from Dean’s fingers to the 
table. He went suddenly scarlet and Magda went 
white. The picture held for a minute, until Mary 
Rose stepped forward, her arms out for the child. 

“Come to Mary Rose, Precious,” she said, and 
then, “This is Mr. Dean, Magda—Mrs. Lawson—” 

But neither heard her. Dean was pale again, 
Magda flushed once more. 

“Magda-” he said, slowly, “Magda Crawford.” 

On the table the picture of the well and beyond it 
the oak tree with those initials. “M.C.—J.D.”— 
Davendale—Watville- 

Mary Rose looked from one to the other. Magda 
had not spoken. The boy twisted restlessly in her 
arms. Mary Rose took him from her. 

“Let me put you to bed,” she persuaded. “Come 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


239 


—let’s you and I go up together; but you’re too 
big a man for me to carry. Have you your slippers 
on? Good. Come along. I’ve just thought of a new 
story.” 

She set the child on the floor and took his hand. 
She did not look again at the two who still stood 
there as if changed to stone. She went up the stairs 
with Warren and put him in the small, old crib Mrs. 
Rogers had found among her treasures, laid the 
patchwork quilt over his feet and, sitting on a low 
chair beside him, told him the story. Once he said, 
“Isn’t Mummy coming up again?” but her absence 
did not seem to bother him, for he fell asleep sud¬ 
denly in the midst of a wide, pink yawn. Mary 
Rose watched the long lashes settle as lightly as a 
butterfly’s wing on the round, tinted cheek. 

She sat there for some minutes in the long golden 
light of evening. It was nearly seven-thirty—time 
for supper. She could not move for thinking of the 
two downstairs—of the tall girl in an apple orchard 
and John Dean eating his heart out under the chest¬ 
nut trees of Paris in the springtime. She wondered. 

“But, oh,” she thought, “that would never do! 
Not now. They must have changed so, those two.” 
Feeling a little disloyal to Dean, good friend as he 
was to her, she told herself that Magda had out¬ 
grown him. “He’s never the man for her, now, never 
in this world,” she thought and then fell to musing 
on herself and Bob. If they did not meet in another 


240 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


ten or twelve years how would it be with them? She 
could not admit that she would change! Not she! 
She must be the same, always, always, and he would 
mean as much to her in fifty years. As for him, 
he wasn’t likely to change, she told herself, wistfully. 

Meantime in the room below the air was heavy 
with memories. 

“Magda!” he said again after Mary Rose had 
left the room and the power to move, the power to 
think coherently had, in some measure, returned. 

She came to him first with that light, sure step and 
held out her big, warm, generous hand. 

“John.” 

He looked about the room a minute, then asked 
her impulsively, keeping her hand in his, “Will you 
come out with me, just a minute? The dear people 
will come in any time now and I must talk to you. 
Just a minute, Magda.” 

She put her arm to her head and twisted the coil 
back with its companions, pushed a hairpin to rights 
and smiled at him, friendly, gravely, a little regret¬ 
fully. “Yes.” 

They went together in the evening shadows as far 
as the small, lovely rose garden and stood there 
facing each other. 

“After all these years,” he said. 

She flung out her hands in a gesture of emotion 
very unlike her. 

“What you must have thought. Listen, John. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


241 


You knew my people—bigoted, narrow, without 
understanding. Someone told them things about 
you—oh, not true, I know it now, I know it—but 
they broke my heart. My mother was ill then, the 
beginning of the long dreadful illness that killed her. 
She implored me to give you up—she and Father. 
So I wrote-” 

“And married-” he suggested, bitterly. 

“Yes. You never knew him. They came to town 
after you left.” 

He looked at her. She was taller than he, a fact 
he fleetingly realized—he had forgotten that—with 
a stupid, trivial sense of annoyance. 

“Was he good to you, Magda?” 

She was silent. She shook her head, and, after a 
minute, said, “No. The old story—a wastrel and 
a drunkard—but,” and her face was a glory then, 
“he gave me Warren, my little son, and the other 
—my first baby. She died, John. I called her 
Dean. People thought that so odd a name for a girl. 
He, my husband, never knew why, and my mother 
and father were dead then; we had moved away, were 
living in Albany.” 

“But how,” he asked, “did you meet Mary Rose?” 

She told him briefly, ending with, “We had moved 
back, you see, after he died. Not to Davendale—I 
couldn’t bear that—but near by.” 

They heard, from the house, the sound of a gong 
and Dean started. 


242 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Supper. We must be getting back. Aren’t they 
wonderful people?” he asked her. 

She nodded at that and in a little silence they went 
back to the house and the ordeal of the supper table. 

Three people that night implored sleep in vain. 
Mary Rose, wondering and anxious, suddenly lonely 
for Bob with a devastating loneliness, lay quietly in 
her bed and stared with wide open eyes out of the 
open windows into the starry darkness. Magda, 
sitting silently beside her boy’s cot remembered, that 
long night through, her youth. She thought she had 
forgotten. This stranger whom she had met a few 
hours ago, he was not the dear, reckless, inspired boy 
she had loved. He was a pleasant little man, with 
whimsical, charming ways—a man one liked, not 
a boy to whom one gave the whole fragrant burden 
of young loving. 

She looked back for the first time in years over 
those old, dreamlike days and her thoughts went on 
relentlessly and pictured to her the few, unhappy, 
silently borne years of her marriage with that other. 
She looked down at the sleeping face of her child. 
It had been worth it; worth all the pain and humili¬ 
ation, all the tears shed in silence and loneliness. She 
thought when she rose, as dawn was flushing the east¬ 
ern sky, and went, a little stiff and cramped and very 
weary, to her room, how sad it was to meet ghosts-in- 
the-flesh once again; and yet, in a way, it was salu¬ 
tary. She acknowledged then that all these years she 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


243 


had gone on loving the young John Dean in her secret 
heart, loving him unconsciously but enough to deafen 
her ears to other men’s pleading, enough to blind her 
eyes and harden her heart to a second loving. She 
had not loved the man she had married. It was 
always with her, that knowledge. It seemed a blot 
on her personal cleanliness, a wound to her dignity, 
an offense against nature and decency. She had not 
loved him, but he had seemed kind and she was young 
and her parents had implored her, so anxious were 
they to hurry her into the “safety” of marriage, 
hoping to force her to forget the boy in Paris. And 
Lawson had had money then, money which meant 
comfort for her father and a little ease to her mother, 
dying the most painful and dreadful of long deaths. 
Well, it was over now. 

Dean, smoking by his open window; what were his 
thoughts? She was more beautiful than he remem¬ 
bered her, more lovely than he had pictured. A 
wonderful woman, fulfilling nobly the exquisite 
promise of her girlhood. And in her steady eyes 
what depths of tragic knowledge and long patience 
there were. He was a sensitive man and an artist; 
he knew as surely as if she had told him what her 
life must have been. He knew, too, that the memory 
of her had kept him from loving again. He had 
always known—had told Mary Rose so. And now? 
He felt nothing— nothing. Yes, something perhaps, 
a warm, pitying friendship, a high admiration and 


244 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

the ache of regret for lost dreams. How strange life 
was. He knocked out the cold pipe against the 
sill and went to bed, wondering if at last he might 
sleep. After all these years, to meet her again and 
find her passed so far beyond his little grasp that 
even his dead, boy’s love could not revive to reach 
her. Well, it was over now. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A night of regretting and remembering did not 
lessen, but rather increased the sense of awkward¬ 
ness between Dean and Magda when they met on 
the following day at the breakfast table. 

There is something so strangely humiliating in 
meeting your dream in the flesh and blood and dis¬ 
covering how little, after all, that dream really 
means to you. You find out that you may keep the 
mind and the heart loyal but that the sheer physical 
make-up of you is not to be held to any old bar¬ 
gains. It knows best! No signals reach it from 
pulse and sudden-beating blood, no symptoms of 
fever are conveyed through the veins, and the 
bewildered body turns away, reluctant and dis¬ 
appointed. 

Magda, watching Dean across the table as he 
nervously traced checkered patterns of sunlight with 
his fork and endeavored, hollowly enough, to tease 
a sober Mary Rose, wondered if it hadn’t been for 
that idee fixee of hers, if she might not have made a 
success of her marriage. This thought cruelly hurt 
her but she faced it gallantly. She had never tried 
to give to her husband even a steady and friendly 
affection; she had never tolerated him, had never 
made allowances, had never thrown heart and soul 
245 


246 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


into the great effort to find the way to help through 
the road of gradual understanding. Always the 
shadow of a boy had stood between them, always 
she had resented the man she had married, fiercely 
and without cessation. She had even, before their 
births, resented the fact of her children and then, 
rebelling against that emotion as unnatural, had 
loved, she felt, her children all the more for that 
temporary disowning. 

If Dean had never been and she had nevertheless 
married Caryl, perhaps the day would have come 
when she would have cared for him. She was very 
young when she married and would have been 
adaptable. She thought, with sudden pity, of the 
man by whose side she had slept and to whom she 
had granted indifference and disfavor. He had not 
been a drunkard when they had married—the ten¬ 
dency was there, surely, but it might never have 
developed. She pushed her cereal plate from her 
with a sensation of sudden sickness. Yes, there 
had been much to vindicate CaryPs attitude. He 
had not been, of course, a strong man—a strong 
man would not have given in as easily—but he had 
been a man of many lovable qualities, generosities, 
impulses. What a living death it must have been 
to him to be tied, day after day, night after night, to 
a woman whose lips were cool under his, whose eyes 
had never once been lighted for him with the little 
flame of loving I He must have known, as she her- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


247 


self knew, what splendid possibilities of sleeping fire 
lay within her—a normal, healthy young woman, 
superbly fashioned for love. The power to love 
was written in every curve of her body, every line 
of her lips, and he had seen her with her babies, all 
woman and divinely tender. All this full stream of 
emotion deflected and dammed by a dream. It was 
too late, she told herself again, and was very humble. 
All these years to have been so blind to Caryl’s suf¬ 
fering, because she herself was drugged with that old, 
unfulfilled dream! 

She rose from the table with a word to Mrs. 
Rogers and fled into the summer sunshine. She 
went out for healing among the fresh opened roses 
and buried her face in the blossoms. Thoms warned 
her, and little scarlet heads shook reproachful dew 
over hands and lips, but quite suddenly she was free 
of old burdens. She cried out her mea culpa to 
Caryl; perhaps, somewhere, somehow, he knew. But 
because she might have loved him she could not 
now mourn him the more. She was free! Free of 
ancient shackles, free to live again, free, as she 
bravely acknowledged, to love again if love were in 
store for her. She went back to the house and found 
Dean smoking moodily on the steps. Mary Rose 
had gone to the studio to look over some last arrange¬ 
ments for next week’s exhibition. 

Dean was also still deep in his bad time. His 
vision of himself, a sentimental and cherished vision, 


248 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


had vanished. All this time to have harbored the 
grudge and thought of himself as a man with a 
broken heart. Had it been broken, would it not have 
mended itself with the sight and sound of Magda, 
lovelier than ever and widowed? He told himself 
that after all he had used Magda as a sort of pro¬ 
tective coloration! That was it! He had been 
afraid to love again, with the maturer and deeper, 
if less devastating, love of a man—afraid—and had 
therefore held the bitter memory of a girl between 
him and other women as one holds a shield. 

“John,” she said to him, the morning sun on her 
flawless skin and in her eyes, “come out and walk 
a little. You look-” 

He jumped up. “As I feel, I suppose—washed 
out. See here, Magda, I’m afraid I embarrass you by 
staying on over the week-end. Suppose I concoct 
an excuse and get back to town?” 

But she shook her head and touched him lightly 
on the shoulder and moved beside him along the 
path to the studio. 

“Don’t be foolish. We aren’t children, any more; 
we are grown men and women. I hurt you terribly 
once, John, and hurt myself with the same two- 
edged weapon. It’s all over now. Need we brood 
and bear grudges and regret what has gone forever? 
Can’t we be friends, after all these years?” 

Her smile was warmer than the sunlight. He took 
her hand in his, halting her, and they stood quite 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


249 


still for a moment, grave, and intent on each other. 

“Yes. Thank you, Magda. Eve been rather a 
fool, I think.” 

They went on again, contented, both of them, with 
the scheme of things as it was. Friends! They 
could become good friends, those two, and Dean 
could have sung aloud. What an easy solution, after 
all. He fancied it would be easier to live up to 
Magda as a friend than as a lover. He felt, sensi¬ 
tively, the tragedy of which he had been the main¬ 
spring and acknowledged to himself that tragic 
women were not his forte. Perhaps he was grow¬ 
ing old, but open sunlight rather than suggested 
shadow seemed preferable to him. He thought affec¬ 
tionately of Mary Rose and wondered for the hun¬ 
dredth time if he would not have fallen in love with 
her had not that now exorcised ghost of his youth 
stood between them. He thought, with a little 
hidden laughter and the tenderness one gives to an 
engaging child, of small Lou Perkins. What fun it 
had been to “show her the town”; what a wide- 
eyed wonder she had found in the most common¬ 
place amusements. Give her a little dance music, a 
good floor, people to observe and food to eat, and 
Lou was a happy mortal. 

They found Mary Rose in the studio. She was 
not alone. Tom Osborne, shirt sleeves rolled up, 
his great hands incongruously employed in packing, 
with meticulous care, the exhibition pictures was 


250 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


with her. She looked up from her own tasks and 
hailed her friends. 

“Hello, you two! Crave a little work?” 

She presented Tom and Magda. The two men 
greeted one another in their customary fashbn— 
Dean, lightly, with a touch of malice; Tom, heavily, 
with more than a touch of his unconquerable sus¬ 
picion. Then the four of them, with amiability, set 
about the final things that had to be accomplished 
—four young, healthy, wholly dissimilar people. 

Warren intruded upon this scene of activity. He 
peeped around the corner of the door and was re¬ 
ceived with open arms by the women and cordial 
salutations from the men. Dean was consciously 
shy of Magda’s child; the artist in him resented most 
bitterly the touching deformity. He felt as if he 
had seen a veritable masterpiece smudged and dis¬ 
figured by a vandal hand. The child was so elfin, 
so unusual—not like Magda, who, lovely as she 
was, was simple as running water and growing trees; 
not, he felt, like the unknown father, but a change¬ 
ling, a product of dew and fire, an uncomfortable, 
pathetic, beautiful child. 

Tom, feeling none of this, was merely sorry. Tom, 
whose hands were as tender as a woman’s with a hurt 
chicken or a sick animal, was as natural with the 
boy as if the child had been a little crippled play¬ 
mate of fields or wood. He swung him to his 
massive shoulder and rode him, shrieking with half- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


251 


panicky delight, all about the big, raftered bam. 
He promised him, if he’d “come on a visit,” the run 
of the chicken yards and pig pens and also, if 
his mother had no objection—which she had and 
promptly uttered—the run of the strawberry beds. 
And later, Tom vowed largely, Warren should make 
hay with him and ride as gallantly as a king rides 
enthroned in the high, sweet-smelling wagons. 

Warren had never known before a man who was 
so closely and unconsciously in touch with a little 
boy’s mind and secret desires. Tom was not subtle 
in his wooing of Magda’s child; there was nothing 
subtle in the Osborne nature. He was merely natural. 
With him, a stranger, Warren forgot his infirmity, 
and knew only that he had found a friend. When 
Tom finally announced that he must get back home 
Warren clung to him and looked with silent appeal 
into the handsome, ruddy face. Tom, laughing, 
said: 

“Might I borrow him for dinner, Mrs. Lawson? 
I promise to be careful. I’d like very much to have 
him meet my sister.” 

Now that was a grown-up touch which completed 
the conquest of the warm little heart. Permission 
given, he trotted off happily by Tom’s side and the 
last they saw of him he was once more riding on 
the friendly shoulder. 

After they had gone Dean felt an impulse to “walk 
to Wellport for the exercise.” He said, casually, he 


252 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


might not be home for dinner and Mary Rose con¬ 
cealed a rather rude and relieved snicker. She and 
Magda went back to Five Chimneys, the pictures 
packed and waiting. Tom Osborne was motoring to 
town on the following day in his station truck and 
would safely transport them. 

“That man,” said Magda, thoughtfully, “is won¬ 
derful with children. He should have a round dozen 
of his own. Warren is so difficult with men. He 
doesn’t like them somehow. I think he resents their 
strength, a little, if so small a child can think that 
far inward.” 

Mary Rose told her something of Osborne and 
his circumstances as they sat, rested and happy, on 
the veranda—told, perhaps, more than she intended, 
for Magda looked at her with laughing eyes and 
made no comment. It was rather clear to her, how¬ 
ever, how things stood between Mary Rose and her 
big neighbor. She wondered if she were glad or 
sorry for Mary Rose’s sake. 

Eventually, the exhibition was held, in Henry 
Mann’s studio, and very flatteringly attended and 
reported, for the season. Of course, John Dean, 
with a shrewd eye on publicity, had murmured to 
those interested of Mary Rose’s recent essays into 
the world of business and art. She found herself 
interviewed and photographed by one progressive 
sheet and was much amazed at the printed result 
which brought her, by the way, more letters of 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


253 


inquiry than her advertisement had done. None, 
however, appealed to her; she had a strangely let¬ 
down sensation, as if she had come to a period of 
idle hands and waiting. 

Some of the exhibition pictures were sold, two 
going to Jabez Jones and three, through an agent 
also, to Amos Brent. Mary Rose told herself, a little 
ruefully, that that was his way of getting even. 
Another was sold to a “Mr. Carter,” and Mary Rose 
laughed and cried over that. How like Bob—not to 
send her a word or a line and then to rush down from 
the busy beginnings of his treasured camp and buy, 
ironically enough, the one picture she had not meant 
to sell and had exhibited only on Dean’s plea, the 
picture she had painted, all for herself, of Miss 
Sally’s winter garden. Why had he bought it? 

She was naively astonished over the size of her 
bank account. It seemed out of proportion to her 
and she planned to spend most of it at once on 
everyone but herself. In this she was restrained 
by Dean and Magda who argued with her that all 
seasons were not alike and that lean ones might 
come. Dean threatened her by a horrid word picture 
of back-to-school-teaching—since she felt she must 
be independent of her family—and advised her, as 
her business partner, that he would allow no foolish 
inroads on what was now her capital. He talked 
largely of investments and Mary Rose, in despair 
at so drab a word, defiantly told him and her father 


254 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


to go ahead and invest until the cattle returned to 
pasturage. She personally had lost all interest in 
the money. They did not, however, take advantage 
of this recklessness. 

That was a truly wonderful summer: Magda 
always with her, Dean occasionally, and Tom and 
little Warren so inseparable a couple that one was 
rarely seen without the other. Magda, loving her 
hosts and her surroundings, was still restless for 
something to do and Mary Rose found a way out for 
her by establishing her first in Lou Perkins’s good 
graces and, early in July, in the Candy Kitchen as 
the “paid worker” had been taken ill and ordered 
home for a long vacation. Lou and Magda together 
were a delight. Lou—how much had Dean told 
her?—eying Magda at first with a cool suspicion and 
a certain amount of wariness and then, little by little, 
succumbing to the older woman’s personality. And 
Magda was so happy. She loved kitchen ways, the 
concocting of luxuries in food, the experimenting with 
sweet stuffs. The little money she earned seemed 
to her so much because she had earned it. Mary 
Rose, watching her, was smitten with a great idea. 
She had seen in a flash of inspiration where Magda’s 
great commercial talent lay. It was in home-making 
and, professionally speaking, in catering. She there¬ 
fore called a family conclave which included Tom 
who just “happened” to be over for supper. He 
had been interrupted in a very thrilling story which 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


255 


he was telling Warren and it was apparent that 
Warren would not sleep that night unless the tale 
were brought to an heroic conclusion. 

Thus spoke Mary Rose to Magda, Tom and 
her parents: 

“This investing business—all that money—I’ve 
found a way to use it.” 

The family pricked up its ears. 

“I shall invest it in Magda. No, don’t interrupt 
me, Mrs. Lawson. I fully intend to claim my 
pound of flesh. In the fall Magda is to open a tea 
room in New York. A tea room in a good section, 
which shall serve simple, good meals and which, 
little by little, shall cater for tired housewives. You 
might call it The Maid’s Night Out,’ Magda, and 
earn a blessing on your head. I shall be silent 
partner. Dads, you may come in on this if you 
wish. I am sure Amos Brent will help us find a 
place. And I shall take over the decorations. What 
do you think of it? Don’t all speak at once!” 

But they did. Voices were raised in assent and 
dissent. And then Magda said, slowly, “I’d love 
it. But—Warren? I couldn’t leave him all day or 
keep him mewed up in a shop, and he must go to 
school.” 

Mary Rose opened her mouth and shut it again as 
Mrs. Rogers spoke. “Warren must stay with us. 
There can’t be two opinions about that, Magda. 
Why, we couldn’t do without Warren, could we?” 


256 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Chorus, and Tom’s deep voice leading: “Do 
without Warren! Never in this world. Why, he’s 
my right-hand man, Mrs. Lawson. I’ll make a 
farmer out of that boy yet. You watch and see.” 

“Think it over,” advised Mary Rose, rising as a 
signal that the conference was adjourned. “I’ll act, 
while you’re thinking.” 

She wrote to Mr. Brent in care of his office and 
to Jabez Jones. She wanted so much for Jabez 
to approve. Somehow she thought of him as much 
more than just a whimsical, lovable stranger. He 
seemed to her like a guardian angel, always near, 
just invisible to her earthly eyes—that was all. 
When his answer came, she rejoiced. 

“Bully for you, little Mary Rose. If you lose 
every cent you possess in it, still bully for you. To 
throw everything into the balance for a friend, that’s 
mad, if you like, and—adorable. I am a business 
man, my dear and, if you two children need more 
money, come to me. I shall put it all on a business 
basis, as I know you wouldn’t want any other. 
I’ll see that a bank lends you what you need on 
my say-so. How would that be?” 

Mary Rose waited until an answer came from 
Mr. Brent in England. He was interested and 
friendly and offered her the choice of two shops 
which he owned, the leases of which would expire in 
the fall. Offered them on childishly simple terms 
and at a rental so low that it was nominal only. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


257 


Mary Rose imagined that he was doing something 
of the kind, but not knowing very much about New 
York real estate, her imagination did not go very 
far. Dean, it was, who whistled long and low when 
her letter and a copy of Brent’s reached him. And 
whistled again when Mary Rose and Magda, jour¬ 
neying to town, picked, unerringly, the attractive 
little shop “right off Fifth” as the scene of future 
activities. 

“Some people have all the luck,” said Dean, 
deeply. 

So the summer flew: the Rogerses contented and 
wondering at the impulse of their nomadic child to 
stay, more or less, at home; Magda, deep in plans for 
her “career”; Warren, happier than ever before in 
his small life; Tom, forgetting his heartache in the 
new, different interest that had come to him, and 
Mary Rose just, somehow, marking time. Snap¬ 
shots reached her from “Camp Roosevelt.” She 
cried half an August night over one of them. Bob, 
himself and in person, presiding over a beach fire 
with a dozen small urchins swarming about him. 
She cried, but she loved it. Even in the little, poor 
photograph she could see such a change in him. 
The eyes—were they not happier? The lines about 
the mouth—were they not ironed out? 

Then, in the midst of plans for decorating the 
shop, plans conceived by Mary Rose and carried 
out by Mr. Dean, who announced himself as general 


258 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


houseworker, in the midst of finding a name, that 
important item, and deciding finally upon just 
“Magda,” a rather battered but comfortable car 
rolled up to Five Chimneys one sunny September 
day and the Mercers got out of it and knocked at 
the open door. 


CHAPTER XX 


It was funny about Mrs. Rogers and Elizabeth 
Mercer—how they “took to one another.” Two 
more different women could not well be imagined. 
Mrs. Mercer was considerably the younger, but she 
seemed older. Her hair was not gray as was Ella 
Rogers’s hair; no disfiguring spectacles marked the 
black eyes and the lines in her oval, sallow face were 
not lines of time. One saw the vanished girl in 
her plainly; she must have been a vivid little thing, 
like a flame. But no flame was there now; rather, 
she was ashes, ashes with embers still burning among 
them, sullen and tenacious of life. But the eyes made 
her old. Mrs. Rogers’s eyes were those of a beloved 
child, clear and wise and trusting, the veritable eyes 
of youth. 

She “mothered” her guest immediately, fussed 
over her a little in the prettiest way in the world, 
a way that brought calm and relaxation somehow. 
David and Mr. Mercer hit it off at once and after 
the business of first greetings and getting acquainted 
was over, they went out to look over the farm. Mr. 
Mercer explained that they would have sent a warn¬ 
ing of their impending arrival only he and his wife 
had decided, on the spur of the moment, to join 
some old friends at Greenport, the starting place of 
259 


260 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


a motor-yachting trip. September weather on Long 
Island is wonderful and he, Mercer, figured that a 
week of salt water would do Mrs. Mercer all the 
good in the world. 

There was some discussion as to why they would 
not impose on the Rogerses for dinner. But finally 
they were persuaded and, the question settled, the 
two men wandered off, leaving the women to their 
own devices. 

Magda had gone to town to consult with Dean. 
Warren was with Tom Osborne, and Mary Rose, 
seeing her mother engrossed with Mrs. Mercer, was 
about to slip off in search of the child when Mrs. 
Mercer held up a thin, nervous hand. They were in 
the living room, sunny and gay with the multi¬ 
colored banners of stiff, decorative zinnias and the 
more delicate flags of cosmos. Mrs. Mercer said, 
looking about her, “How—restful. Just what I 
should have thought. Mrs. Rogers, I must confess 
that we have really come in the guise of enemies.” 

Mary Rose’s little mother looked mildly alarmed. 
She said placidly, however, “I’m sure you don’t mean 
that, Mrs. Mercer.” 

The other woman laughed, without mirth. “In¬ 
deed I do. Let me explain and I won’t blame you 
at all if you order us off the place like thieves. We 
—we want to borrow your daughter for a little 
while.” 

Mary Rose was breathless with amazement. Mrs. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


261 


Rogers said, still placidly but with a resigned I-knew- 
it look about her mouth, “How do you mean— 
borrow? ” 

A dark flush crept into the sallow cheeks. Eliza¬ 
beth Mercer clasped her hands in her lap so tightly 
that the knuckles showed white. 

“This. Mr. Mercer is planning, in January, a trip 
to the West Indies—Porto Rico. We have never 
been there. There are boats that take one down 
comfortably and make a round trip of the Island. It 
will take, I think, about sixteen days in all, unless 
we care enough about the place to stay over. Ever 
since Miss Rogers came out to Davendale, Mr. 
Mercer has been set on her going. He—he was 
so much attracted by her. We neither of us know 
any young people and we-” 

Her voice trailed off limply into silence. She 
raised the smoldering eyes to those of her hostess. 
Mary Rose drew a deep breath. 

“Would you like to go, dear?” her mother asked 
her, flatly. 

The black eyes turned to her now—anxious, plead¬ 
ing. Mary Rose could not bear the look in them. 
She thought rapidly. By January, Magda would 
be launched in the tea room; by January, little 
Warren would be accustomed to school and to being 
away from his mother the greater part of the week, 
and Magda would be at Five Chimneys week-ends, 
once the place got running nicely and the helper 



262 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

they had engaged had worked into things. She, 
Mary Rose, had never been in the tropics. Her 
eyes shone. 

“I’d love it,” she said sincerely. “It’s awfully 
good of you.” 

But Mrs. Mercer interrupted her. She looked 
suddenly almost happy and Mary Rose marveled at 
the change in her. That was all she needed after 
all—happiness. 

“Then it’s settled,” stated, rather than asked, Mrs. 
Mercer. 

Ella Rogers looked a little doubtful. “I’ll have 
to speak to her father,” she began and then laughed 
with a little chuckle which ended in a sigh. “There, 
I’m always forgetting that Mary Rose has grown 
up. If she wants to go, of course she may.” 

Her father’s voice at that instant calling her from 
just beyond the window brought Mary Rose to her 
feet. She ran out with a word of excuse, glad of 
the opportunity of leaving the two women together. 
When she reached the veranda, Mercer and her 
father were waiting for her. 

“What’s all this?” David began. “Mercer, here, 
tells me he wants to steal you for a trip this winter.” 

“I’ve just heard,” said Mary Rose, putting her 
hand in her father’s and flashing a look of delight 
at the big, genial man who stood there, clad in the 
apparently inevitable white ducks, with quite a new 
and respectable hat pushed far back on his fore- 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


263 


head, “and I think it’s wonderful. Can you spare 
me, Dads?” 

“No,” he answered, tightening his clasp of her 
hand, “I never can spare you, but must is must, and 
if she sets her heart on a thing—besides,” he added 
surprisingly, “I think a little trip would do the child 
good.” 

He looked at Mercer in a friendly fashion and 
nodded his head as if something were settled between 
them. Mary Rose wondered how much Hal Mercer 
had told her father of his anxiety for his wife. She 
wondered, too, at the deep, tender regard her father 
had given her as she stepped to his side, but she 
never knew how worried he had been about her 
ever since her return from Boxwood. She walked on 
with the two men, taking them to the studio. 

Meantime Mrs. Rogers sat in the living room with 
Elizabeth Mercer and they managed somehow to 
find one another across the great gulf which sep¬ 
arates human beings. 

“You’ll think it very strange. We only saw her 
once,” Mrs. Mercer said haltingly, in a manner 
unlike her usual rather quick, bird-like way of 
speaking, “just that once, but Hal fell in love with 
her and I-” 

Without astonishment Mrs. Rogers nodded. 
“Everyone does.” 

“Yes, I can see that. I am very fond of young 
girls but have come so little in contact with them. 



264 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


We—lost a daughter, ten years ago. She would 
have been about the age of yours.” 

“We have lost three,” said Mrs. Rogers. “Two 
were girls.” 

“But you have Mary Rose,” said the other woman, 
with such a bitterness of envy in her low voice that 
Ella Rogers leaned over and laid a hand on her 
arm. 

“Don’t take it like that.” 

Elizabeth Mercer flung back her head; her nos¬ 
trils were dilated and her voice shook to the ebb 
and flow of color in her face. 

“It’s easy to say that. That’s what they said to 
me at first—all of them. How was I to ‘take it’ with 
humility and the usual hypocrisy of, ‘God’s will be 
done’? I can’t believe it was His will. If I thought 
that, I’d never believe in Him again—never. She 
was all we had and I knew £here would never be 
another. It was a miracle that I had her. I lay flat 
on my back for months before she was born. The 
doctors said it was sheer will power on my part that 
resulted in carrying her safely. After that dreadful 
time which ended the waiting I had her in my arms 
—oh, you’ll never know ” 

Mrs. Rogers felt the great tears stinging her eyes 
but her voice was steady. “Yes, I know. All 
mothers would know—real mothers. But you’re not 
being fair, my dear; not fair to yourself or to your 
husband, not fair to your little girl.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


265 


Mrs. Mercer asked, dully, “Not fair? What do 
you mean?” 

“These past ten years. Don’t you suppose they’ve 
been hard on your husband, always living under the 
shadow of your sorrow? WTiat sort of a home does 
that make for a man? Surely not a home he wants 
to come back to at night. Mary Rose told me how 
he gave up his work. Don’t you suppose that meant 
a great deal to him? A man’s work is so impor¬ 
tant to him always. If you’d left him that it would 
have helped him over the hard place.” 

She was always a brave woman in her quiet 
fashion. She was hurting to heal. Not for nothing 
had all of Wellport come to her with their troubles 
all these years; not for nothing was she the mother 
of Mary Rose. 

They had forgotten that a few hours ago they had 
been strangers. They sat and faced one another, 
two middle-aged women, come to grips over a vital 
thing. 

Elizabeth Mercer flashed out, “Help him? Men 
don’t feel that sort of thing the way women do. 
They can’t.” 

“How do you know? Do you think for a moment 
that David loves Mary Rose less than I do? He 
is her father. Her jather! She’s as much a part 
of him as she is of me.” 

“He didn’t bring her into the world, suffer for her, 
sacrifice.” 


266 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


But Mrs. Rogers broke in, triumphantly, “No. 
That blessing wasn’t given him. But never you 
think that men don’t suffer. They do. Men who 
love their wives, men who want children, sacrifice 
more than we know. You’ve not been fair to him 
all these years.” 

There was a silence and then Mrs. Mercer said 
wearily, “Perhaps not. But life itself hasn’t been 
fair to me.” 

“It’s pretty much as you make it,” the other 
woman returned, smoothing her dress with a gesture 
characteristic of her and then looking for a moment 
idly at the broad gold band in her hand, a hand 
work had not made unbeautiful but had made strong 
and comforting and fine. “Pretty much. With the 
child gone, you had him to turn to—another child. 
Men are like that to their wives—just children, 
somehow. Funny,” she mused, and did not mean 
humorous, “what sorrow does to two people whotove 
one another. Either it brings them closer together 
or else it just seems as if it pushed them farther 
and farther away from one another.” 

“I always thought he didn’t care—much,” said 
Mrs. Mercer. “I thought he deliberately tri^d to 
forget. We traveled around a great deal. He always 
tried to have people with us.” 

“What if he did try to forget? Isn’t that human? 
Perhaps he only wanted to remember the happy 
things.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


267 


“He never speaks to me of her—much. Since 
your girl was with us, he has spoken more. The 
day she came he looked at me and I knew he was 
thinking what was in my mind—that she looked as 
Betty might have looked. Did I say they would have 
been about the same age?” 

The little, pitiful repetition broke the tender heart 
so close to her, and Mrs. Rogers cried pitifully, 
“Oh, my dear, don’t hurt your baby so much with all 
this bitterness and brooding and withdrawing your¬ 
self. Don’t hurt her.” 

Mrs. Mercer’s eyes widened. “Do you think she 
knows?” 

In all the simplicity of the old faith, the old trust 
in ancient and lovely beliefs, Mrs. Rogers answered 
her. “I am sure she knows and it must make her 
so unhappy.” 

“I had thought,” the other woman murmured, 
"that there was no remembering—out there, that my 
little girl was content without her mother.” 

“She should be. God meant her to be. Why do 
you hold her back from happiness? It—it’s like 
weighting her little feet so’s she can’t use her wings. 
Can’t you think of her as happy because you your¬ 
self wish her to be? Can’t you think of her as a gift 
given for a little time and then taken back by the 
Giver—not as lost to you, but as near and loving and 
sharing?” 

Elizabeth Mercer tried to speak. She tried twice 


268 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


before the tears came. She couldn’t remember when 
she had cried last. It had been a long time ago. 
How good it felt! She let the tears sweep over her. 
Mrs. Rogers made no move to touch her. She sat 
there waiting, praying a little for the right words, 
until the storm had passed. 

The other woman raised her ravaged face. 
“Thank you—and you’ll lend us Mary Rose? I—* 
I must be truthful with you. I didn’t want her, 
really. Yes, I did, I wanted her terribly but I was 
afraid, afraid of what it might mean to me. I wanted 
her and I didn’t, but Hal kept insisting.” 

“He knew what would be good for you.” 

“I wonder. I thought it was because he always 
wants a third person with us and he was so attracted 
by her. Now will you let us have her? I am not 
afraid any more.” 

“Why I thought it was settled,” said Mrs. Rogers 
with her lovely smile. “Of course. For as long 
as you wish.” 

They heard footsteps outside. Mrs. Mercer 
dabbed at her wet cheeks with a sopping handker¬ 
chief and looked appealingly at her hostess and Ella 
rose to the occasion and her own two feet. 

“You come on upstairs. You can bathe youi eyes 
there and rest a little, while I see about dinner. It’s 
most time.” 

They went upstairs together, hands clasped, as 
children go. 


CHAPTER XXI 


“Why!” said Mary Rose to the Nonsense Cat 
who sat sedately on the window seat, belying her 
name by her sober attitude, and gazed out upon a 
winter landscape, “why, it’s almost Christmas! ” 

She really couldn’t believe it, although in her 
bureau drawer a large pile of white-wrapped, star- 
dotted, crimson-tied presents lay waiting the gift 
day. It seemed to her that since the visit of the 
Mercers, time had had more than wings. There had 
been the excitement of getting Warren off to school, 
the thrill of launching Magda in the tea room, her 
own work, letters, faithfully answered, from Jabez 
and Miss Sally and the Mercers, Dean’s visits, Tom, 
the family—and here it was Christmas again. 

She dislodged Miranda and sat down on the 
window seat. An early winter was promised for this 
year and she looked over a leaden sky and heavy air 
flecked with languid flakes of snow. Last Christ¬ 
mas? Her heart was, momentarily, as burdened as 
the thick, grey clouds. In all these months no word 
from Bob. She heard of him through Jabez, that the 
camp had been a great success, that he, Bob, was 
happy, that Ella and Sam had been in their element 
with a parcel of small boys to chase, scold and spoil, 
but from Bob himself, nothing. She said to her- 
269 


270 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


self, quite honestly, that she had not, consciously, 
thought of him very much. This was true. But he 
built a background to all her thoughts, he was there 
in her mind as buried treasure lies fathoms deep 
under the surface of the sea and gives no sign of 
its presence; he was part of her whether she thought 
of him or not and she had gone on loving him 
always. 

“And that just shows what an idiot I am!” said 
Mary Rose, jumping up as she heard her father 
drive in from Wellport with the noon mail, “but— 
I don’t regret it,” she added, bravely. 

With Christmas a week off the house was filled 
with preparations. There was to be the biggest 
gathering since Five Chimneys had come into being. 
The Osbornes had opened their unused guest rooms 
for the overflow. At Five Chimneys Magda, little 
Warren, Dean, and the two aunts would be staying 
and at Osbornes’, the Mercers. The Christmas 
dinner and the tree were to be at Five Chimneys. 
Lou Perkins would be over and some of the Well- 
portians. If only Miss Sally could be there—and 
some others! 

They all arrived on Christmas Eve, and by that 
time the house was filled with mysterious packages. 
Mary Rose had a registered one from New York 
with the address of Amos Brent’s office on it. It 
filled her with such curiosity and such a prickling in 
her finger tips that her mother had to to take it 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


271 


away from her and hide it in the jam closet, as “not 
to be opened before Christmas” was a command¬ 
ment strictly adhered to since Mary Rose’s baby¬ 
hood. From Jabez had come half a dozen books. 
She knew that they were books by the shape and 
feel of them and the name of the great bookseller on 
the wrappings—and a letter. The letter told her 
that, mentally speaking, he would be spending 
Christmas with her and that another gift would 
follow. 

That Christmas Eve, spent by request at the 
Osbornes’, was an unforgettable one and indescrib¬ 
able. Everyone talked at once, all were friendly, 
all were happy; there was a babel of voices, an 
undercurrent of laughter. Warren was everywhere 
at once, his eyes like stars; Mary Rose, moving from 
one group to another; the older people, “sitting 
back” and enjoying things; Dean and Lou Perkins in 
a corner intent over a cracker pull; Tom following 
Warren about with a maternal anxiety lest he eat 
too much or not enough; Magda, radiant, telling 
of her struggles and triumphs and contentment; the 
Mercers, quiet enough, but truly a part of it all. 

Christmas Day was clear. The snow Tom had 
promised Warren did not put in an appearance. There 
was a cable from Miss Sally from Rome and di¬ 
rectly after breakfast the vast excitement of the tree. 
Mary Rose, in a holly-red frock, presided and could 
hardly be torn away from her guests’ unwrappings 


27 2 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


and exclaimings to examine her own “haul,” as 
Dean unpoetically put it. From the family and her 
friends she had, she stated, everything in the world 
she wanted. The Jabez books were just the right 
ones; Dean’s volumes of Orpen just what she had 
desired; Tom’s inevitable candy something she 
would have missed had it not arrived on time— 
while the various family gifts of clothes and money 
were appreciated with kisses. But the Brent box— 
she hadn’t opened it—she had a feeling— 

It was Warren who forced her to it and when the 
wrappings were off and the box disclosed, there was 
a loud “Ah!” of general excitement. The name on 
the box was that of a famous French jeweler and in 
the box was a small and beautiful wrist watch of 
diamonds with the encircling bracelet of little perfect 
pearls. It was evident that the Brents had bought 
the jewel in Paris and had sent it home by a friend 
that she might be spared the customs. It had then 
been forwarded from the office to her. The card 
read, “From Coral and Amos Brent to whom you 
will have given the happiest Christmas they have 
ever kno^n.” 

She loved the watch. What normal girl in her 
senses would not have loved that thing of dew and 
fire and the soft, satin glow of pearls? But more 
than the watch, she loved the card. She thought 
nothing as lovely had ever come to her. 

“Well, I must say,” said Dean, amid the general 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


273 


din of talk and comment, “your luck certainly 
holds.” 

Mrs. Mercer, sitting near, looked up and spoke. 
She was not given to much talk but Mary Rose knew 
by her eyes that she was content to be there, an 
integral part of the festivities. 

“That’s not luck, Mr. Dean,” she contradicted 
him. 

He picked up the watch and let the bracelet slide 
through his fingers. 

“I feel like something in a fairy tale,” he mur¬ 
mured, “all dripping with diamonds and pearls. Not 
luck? What is it then?” He smiled at her as he 
spoke. He had grown very friendly with the Mer¬ 
cers in a few hours. 

Mrs. Mercer groped a little for words, which was 
rare with her. She put out a hand and touched 
Mary Rose lightly on the shoulder of the gay little 
dress. 

“It’s—love,” she said and added hastily, “That’s 
her secret. Haven’t you seen it—loving people? 
And it comes back to her in love for love, and,” she 
added laughing a little, “sometimes, in diamonds and 
pearls.” 

Mary Rose replied honestly. “But I didn’t love 
them, you know—the Brents. I think I was mostly 
sorry for them.” 

Mrs. Mercer looked triumphant, “Well, that’s 
part of it, isn’t it?” 


274 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Mary Rose looked hastily about for help. She 
didn’t care much for the turn of the conversation. 
She was not a person who liked to hear herself 
analyzed, however eulogistically. She saw Warren 
across the room busy with the grocery store that 
Tom’s clever hands had built for him and beckoned 
him to come over to her. 

“Have you seen all your presents, Warren?” 

“I’m beginning over again,” the child told her, 
radiantly. 

“And which do you like the best?” Dean asked 
him. 

Warren hesitated. He was a sensitive child and 
disliked to hurt anyone. Mary Rose had been 
lavish, the Mercers had remembered him, Dean had 
brought him an impossible rabbit of a type he had 
long since outgrown and a chocolate Santa Claus 
almost as big as his small self, his mother and the 
Rogerses had been clairvoyants in reading his wishes 
but- 

His eyes went across the room to the proud bulk 
of the grocery store with its shelves and the little 
counter, its tiny scales and sheets of wrapping paper, 
its rows on rows of miniature tins. 

“I think,” he said, “my store. Tom made it, you 
see,” and there was in his eyes that most beautiful 
thing, the clear light of hero worship. 

Tom and Magda, on their respective knees by the 
little wooden, open-faced shop, were talking. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


275 


“I haven’t ever told you,” she was saying, “how 
grateful I am to you for all you have done for 
Warren. Not just this sort of thing,” she touched 
with a tender, careful hand the polished counter 
of the shop, “but for the other things. He’s a dif¬ 
ferent boy, stronger physically, I am sure, and so 
much happier. He’s more—more normal and it’s 
all been you!” 

Tom laughed but his eyes were grave. “He means 
a lot to me—that little chap,” he said simply. 

She put out her hand to him, kneeling there, and 
he took it in his own and looked into her eyes for 
a long minute. What a woman! The only woman 
he could imagine as Warren’s mother. The finest 
he had ev£r known. Her hand felt like satin and 
steel to his touch. That was Magda—tender as a 
woman and strong as a man. The man who could 
claim her for his own—he thought of that dead, 
unknown husband with a quick intake of his breath, 
scoundrel or fool he must have been. Mary Rose 
had told Tom a very little of her own ideas of the 
subject of Caryl Lawson. Mary Rose? 

He released Magda’s hand and got to his feet, 
then put out his hand again to help her, but she 
had already risen in one sinuous, lovely movement 
and stood beside him, almost as tall as he. He 
looked across the room at Mary Rose. How little 
she was and how dear! No one quite like her—but 
the old hurt and ache at his heart were gone. Some- 


276 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


how he hadn’t realized it but it must have been 
gone for a long time. He still loved her, his Mary 

Rose of all these years, but- He laughed aloud 

in his astonishment. So that was it! That was why 
he had been so happy-hearted all this summer, all 
the autumn. He had gone free. 

There was a knock at the door and Mary Rose, 
who was nearest, rose to answer it. She opened it 
and spoke, but as there was no reply she stepped 
out on the veranda. 

“Go right back,” said a voice, a voice she had 
been hearing too often of late, but only in her heart. 
“You’ll catch cold. Jabez sent me. Are you glad?” 

It was Bob. 

There was one terrible moment in which she 
thought she would faint. To see him again, to 
touch his hand, to look into his eyes and hear his 
laughter! She had imagined it, all these months, 
but reality so far outstripped imagination that for 
a second her breath failed her. It was like a little 
death. 

“Mary Rose! You’re not glad!” 

She put out her hand then, and the color came 
flooding back. 

“Of course. Merry Christmas!” 

“Merry Christmas!” 

He said it now with his eyes and his lips. He 
meant it. He was happy to be with her. She knew 
it as surely as she knew her own little name. 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


277 


“Aren’t you coming in?” 

He followed her into the big room and went 
through the ordeal of introductions creditably 
enough. There were several curious eyes upon him 
—Tom’s and Dean’s. And more searching than 
curious were the eyes of David Rogers and his little 
wife. 

Later, he took Mary Rose aside and showed her, 
tied to the lapel of his coat and tucked under it, a 
little holly-bordered card which read, “Merry 
Christmas to Mary Rose from Jabez Jones.” 

“But how silly,” she protested, “and how conceited 
of you!” 

“Then you don’t want me?” 

She smiled at him. She hadn’t come to the end of 
a long year to find the dishonesty she had once 
denied him at the end. 

“I always want you.” 

He nodded a little. “That’s like you—to say 
that.” 

But it wasn’t until late that night that he had 
his real chance with her. The studio had been 
cleared for dancing and heated with stoves. The 
Wellport youthful talent was on an improvised dais 
with a piano and two banjos. Half of Wellport 
disported itself on the waxed floor. Ancient stalls 
that had not been removed when the barn was turned 
into a studio were equipped with chairs and cushions 
and small tables and the whole place, lighted by 


278 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


many candles, was hung with holly and greens, with 
mistletoe and cedar and pine boughs. Into one 
such stall Bob drew her. He was staying for the 
night after persuasion—and not very much of that 
—at Tom Osborne’s. 

“Mary Rose, why do you suppose I’ve come way 
down here?” 

“To wish me Merry Christmas?” Her heart hurt 
her, beating in her throat that way. 

“Yes, and to beg a gift.” 

He had her hand now. No one saw them, no 
one overheard. 

“I’ve been a fool. You must have known it all 
along. I love you, Mary Rose. I’ve been loving you 
ever since I left you in Miss Sally’s garden with the 
blue cloak of your honesty about you and your dark 
little head held so high and your dear eyes shining. 
They’ve shone on me all these months and there 
aren’t any more clouds. There isn’t a place in my 
heart that isn’t swept and waiting for you, Mary 
Rose.” 

Irrelevantly she said, over the beating of that 
pulse in her throat, the drumming of blood in her 
ears, “You didn’t write.” 

“No. I wanted to give you time, dearest. I was 
afraid you might think—oh, any number of things. 
You would think them, you know. Mary Rose, do 
you love me as you said you did?” 

“Yes.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 279 

“And I’m giving you,” he told her, in Mrs. Mer¬ 
cer’s words, “love for love.” 

They were still for a minute and then his voice 
came again. 

“When will you marry me?” 

“You haven’t asked me.” 

“Silly little person. Will you marry me, dear, 
dearest?” 

“Yes.” 

She stood up and away from him. 

“But—not for a long time. Not until—spring?” 

“That’s years!” 

“No. Listen, Bob, I’ve promised the Mercers to 
go with them to Porto Rico. I must keep my word, 
dear. It means a great deal to them. I can’t tell 
you why now, but I will later. That will be in 
January and—then you’ll have time to be sure— 
sure.” 

“I’ve had almost a year,” he said. “More, I think. 
Do you remember, Mary Rose, do you remember our 
last Christmas—together?” 

She remembered and told him so. And he said, 
very low, “Think—of next Christmas, Mary Rose.” 

He caught her hands and besought her, “Find 
a wrap. Come out of doors. This barn isn’t big 
enough to hold me and my happiness.” 

She obeyed him with an unusual meekness and 
they slipped out of the great doors and into the 
star-mad night. They walked in silence to the little 


280 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


deserted rose garden and faced each other there 
over the warning grey shape of the sundial. 

He did not touch her but stood before her, very 
tall and straight, his face a white blur in the star¬ 
light. 

“We’ll speak of it once, and never again. You 
must believe me wholly, Mary Rose, or there’s no 
good in it, you see. We would have built our lives 
on a shaky foundation. I shan’t deny that other 
dear, that would be wrong. It was love, but 
this is better, Mary Rose. This is more than just 
love. It is understanding and gratitude and wor¬ 
ship and at the heart of it the clear white flame you 
wanted.” 

She said, unsteadily, “You are sure.” 

“Sure. Why, I knew back there at Little Lodge. 
You were so sweet. I wanted you then. I was 
starved for a woman like you. But I denied it, 
denied it to myself. I thought perhaps it must be 
just the flare-up of physical attraction, bred by 
loneliness and my isolation with you and your near¬ 
ness.^ Then when I went to Miss Sally’s, I was de¬ 
termined that that element shouldn’t enter into it. 
See, Mary Rose, I can’t explain. I was afraid of 
it. I was afraid of passion. It had wrecked me 
once. So I pretended, to you, to myself, and said it 
did not exist and claimed for you the other things, 
the tenderness and the friendship. You refused 
them. How wise you were, you darling! You knew 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


281 


somehow. And then I went away, and had all that 
year to think and dream and desire. I wanted you 
terribly, always, every minute. I knew you wanted 
me. Don’t you suppose I could feel your wanting 
me over all the miles? But I stayed away; I wanted 
you to be sure too. Oh, it’s all so inseparable— 
body, soul and spirit, Mary Rose.” 

He held out his arms to her and she went to them, 
happily, safely, securely, and knew, for the first 

time, the unimaginable wonder of his kiss. 

%' - J 


CHAPTER XXII 


Much later, walking back to the studio, Mary- 
Rose said, rather pensively: 

“But it isn’t at all according to Hoyle! Think— 
think how dreadful it sounds in plain words. A 
venturesome young lady takes a trip into the wilds 
of the Adirondacks where she meets a strange young 
man. She falls in love with him. Later, he pursues 
her, it would seem reluctantly, and while insisting 
that his emotions regarding her are slightly warmer 
than those of a brother, but at the same time some¬ 
what cooler than those of a lover, he proposes to 
her.” 

“Mary Rose, what a perfect cad you make me 
sound!” 

Ignoring him, she continued serenely: 

“The lady then sensibly refuses him while ad¬ 
mitting her superior affection. The third act takes 
place on Long Island when the young man appears 
announcing, ‘A mistake! I love you after all,’ and 
she falls into his arms. O Bob, what an unheroic 
herbine I am. I should send you away, play with 
you for a time and then magnanimously call you 
back.” 

“Well, why don’t you?” 

“Not a chance,” she answered gaily. “It would be 
282 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


283 


a plain case of the small boy and the spanking 
parent—it would hurt me more than you!” 

He tightened the arm that was brazenly around 
her. 

“We’re almost at the studio. Shall we tell them 
now?” 

“Tomorrow?” she begged. 

“Tonight.” 

“Very well-” 

He said, soberly, “And I want to talk to your 
father and mother. What do you know about me, 
Mary Rose? Sum it all up. It amounts to zero.” 

She answered, “I know enough. I love you. And 
there’s the word of our good Jabez-” 

“Jabez Jones, to be sure. But he may be a 
myth.” 

She stopped stock-still in the road. 

“Oh, no, Bob. Don’t even say it in fun! Not 
a myth, just a magic reality.” 

“Perhaps.” 

“Now,” continued Mary Rose comfortably, “he 
will have to unmask. He can’t go on sharing his 
secret with you alone. It has to belong to me too.” 

“Yes,” answered her lover gravely, “he must 
unmask.” 

She stirred a little at his tone, trying to read his 
face in the starlight. 

“You don’t mean- What do you mean?” 

The old suspicion moved faintly in her thoughts. 


284 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

“I don’t believe you are he!” she cried out at 
that. 

“Why not?” 

Mary Rose chuckled. 

“ ’Tain’t possible. I thought so once and then 
knew I was wrong—and was glad. I confess there 
were moments, early in my knowledge of him, when 
I wished you were one and the same; I had a sort 
of sentimental affection for Jabez. But when I con¬ 
vinced myself that you were two quite different 
people I was happy. It was better so. I really, 
down deep, wanted him for a friend, a guardian, a 
guide and a philosopher—someone old and wise and 
dear—not a young thing like you whom I could 
love and scold and mother and adore.” 

“Do you, darling?” 

“Do I what?” 

“ ‘Adore’?” 

“Hush. I refuse to answer. But if you were 
Jabez, don’t you see how it would spoil everything? 
Your confidences wouldn’t be confidences, your 
philosophy wouldn’t be sound. One of you had to 
be playing a part. I can’t explain, but I would hate 
it.” 

“Rest easy. We are not the same,” he told her, 
laughing. “I informed you of that before. And you 
are to meet him. He told me to tell you that if you 
found his Christmas gift acceptable he would be 
down here as soon as he could get a train after a 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


285 


wire from me. As I suppose all telegraph operators 
in these parts are all but dead and buried at this 
midnight hour, I shall wire him the first thing in the 
morning.” 

“Oh,” said Mary Rose, “how wonderful! Yet, 
in a way, I shall half regret knowing him. It was 
awfully dear the other way.” 

They were at the studio and went in. Mary 
Rose had starry eyes and rosy cheeks, perhaps from 
the chill in the still air. Bob Carter walked as kings 
should walk, and probably don’t, and carried his 
head very high indeed. 

Three people saw them enter—Elizabeth Mercer, 
Tom Osborne and Magda. Magda and Tom were 
dancing and she suddenly clutched his arm. 

“Look! There by the door! Mary Rose and 
Mr. Carter.” 

Tom looked. He knew a sudden pain that was 
more like the ghost of agony than the real, heart¬ 
twisting thing. He thought to himself, but quite 
without jealousy, “It will be hard to lose her.” 

Magda, with her eyes suddenly misted over, said 
to him simply, “Aren’t they—beautiful?” 

And Elizabeth Mercer thought, strangely, “Those 
two. If Betty had lived I would be losing her some 
day just like this.” 

Bob left Mary Rose and went in search of Mr. 
and Mrs. Rogers. He found one of them up at 
the house in the kitchen and the other prowling 


286 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


around the studio, seeing that the candles did no 
damage. Him he captured first and took him back 
to die house. There in the kitchen, he told them, 
very quietly. 


There were tears, I think, and sorrow—and a great 
joy in their child’s happiness. When the little, sat¬ 
isfactory talk was over, Bob said, his arm around 
Mrs. Rogers and his eyes on the door, for he knew 
Mary Rose had followed him, which was strictly 
against orders, “Come in, little wretch.” 

She peered around the sill, laughing, crying, her 
dark curls tossed. Her father and mother held out 
their arms simultaneously. Somehow she managed 
to get into both circles and Bob’s too, and what was 
said then was sacred and incoherent and a little sad 
and very happy. 

“We’ll tell ’em all at supper,” Bob announced 
masterfully. 

“It’s a mercy,” said Mrs. Rogers practically, “that 
the help was out of the way getting things ready 
in the barn when you burst in on me like this!” 

Supper was served at long trestle tables, a wonder¬ 
ful supper of hot and cold things to eat and drink 
and plenty of it. In the midst of it David Rogers 
stood up, his glass in his hand. 

“Merry Christmas!” he said, smiling his good, 
slow smile at his guests, “and I want you all to join 
with me in wishing happiness to Mary Rose — and 
to my son.” 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


287 


He indicated Rob with a little nod of his head and 
then suddenly everyone was up from his chair 
and there were cheers and exclamations and laugh¬ 
ter and more tears. f 

Mr. Mercer was unpleasantly alarmed. He got to 
his feet—or perhaps he was already there—and 
pointed a finger of warning at young Mr. Carter. 

“See here, young man,” he boomed, “what do you 
mean by it, eh? I had it all fixed to elope with that 
girl of yours in about two weeks, and along you come 
and spoil it all!” 

Bob protested above a babel of voices, but Mary 
Rose lifted her clear little pipe and called to Mercer, 
who truly seemed agitated, across the table. 

“But I am going with you,” she said. “How could 
you dream I wouldn’t? Our arrangements were all 
made ages ago and we couldn’t let anyone come in 
and upset them, could we?” 

She smiled at him reassuringly and he subsided 
but growled at her in mock dismay. 

“Still, I didn’t bargain for any newly engaged 
young woman, Mary Rose. I’m afraid you’ll just 
about melt away down there in the tropics with 
homesickness for that young robber of yours.” 

“Oh, no,” replied Mary Rose serenely. “Separa¬ 
tions are good for people!” 

Lou Perkins whispered to Dean, who was sitting 
beside her, “Isn’t she a dear? And I do like that 
Carter man—such a romantic face!” 


288 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


Dean, himself a little sorrowful at the turn of 
events, objected. “Romantic? Must a man be that 
to recommend himself to you, Lou? I haven’t a 
chance then, have I?” 

He said it laughingly but she raised those great 
infantile eyes to his and answered quite soberly, 
“Why—I think you’re just wonderful, John!” 

Later, encountering her in the mazes of the Paul 
Jones, he looked down on the small, blonde head. 
Nice to dance with a girl so much shorter—ridicu¬ 
lous, of course, but it made a man feel strong and 
protective and all that sort of penny-novelette busi¬ 
ness; Magda, now, he had just danced with Magda 
and it had been something of a strain on his pride. 
Lou was really a darling with her soft little ways 
and her bubbling interests and her clear-eyed, child¬ 
ish outlook on life. 

And so the party ended, everyone in the correct 
party spirit. The house guests and hosts stood on the 
veranda of Five Chimneys as the Wellport vehicles 
pulled out and called through the clear air, over and 
over, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” 

Mary Rose, standing in a little circle of her own, 
with Bob and her father beside her, said with a 
choke in her voice, in the old, immortal words: 

“ ‘God bless us, every one!’ ” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


Said Jabez Jones to Bob Carter when the latter 
met him at the station on the evening of the twenty- 
sixth day of December, “Do you think she’ll be 
angry?” 

“Very possibly. She’s awfully pretty when she’s 
really riled.” 

“But, seriously, Bob, I find myself growing 
disturbed.” 

Bob had borrowed Tom’s car and driven down for 
Jabez alone. He had decided that was the better 
way. Jabez should stay at Tom’s for the night, too, 
as the Five Chimneys house guests showed no signs 
of departing for another day. And Bob had arranged 
with Mary Rose to meet her at Tom’s, where there 
might be a little procurable privacy. He did not 
want her first meeting with Jabez to occur under 
forty eyes. 

“I’m as nervous as an ingenue on an opening 
night,” confessed Jabez. “More so, I fancy. But, 
Bob, I would never have come down here, not for a 
dozen yous and half a dozen Mary Roses, had I 
known there was a mass meeting. What’s the good 
of being incognito all these years?” 

The early winter dusk had closed down on them. 
Bob could not see his companion’s face but he took 
289 


290 MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 

a hand from the wheel to touch the shoulder nearest 
him. 

“Brace up, Jabez,” he said reassuringly. “No one 
shall know. Just Mary Rose; not even that good 
chap, John Dean, shall be permitted to suspect. The 
Rogerses—well, you can tell them if you wish. They 
will be as close as the tomb, both of them. For the 
rest—well, you shall be presented under your own 
name and surely that’s recommendation enough!” 

“You flatter me,” said Jabez, drily. 

“What about this host of ours? What did you tell 
him?” Jabez persisted. 

“Osborne? Oh, just that I had a guest coming 
down over night, if it was all the same to him. He’s 
a very fine sort. Has been in love with my girl for 
years, if I’m the Sherlock I think myself—and small 
blame to him. However, I think he has recovered, 
something I confess I can’t understand. Mary Rose 
is sworn to secrecy as far as you are concerned. 
Why, I never saw you so agitated, Jabez!” 

The other man made a curious sound, between a 
chuckle and a groan. 

“I’d hate for her to be disappointed,” he said, with 
homely simplicity. 

“Nonsense. Of course you might be more ro¬ 
mantic than you are, but I truly doubt it. You 
might have turned out to be me. Fancy that honor! 
Or her ^admirer, Brent. Odd man, that! Mary 
Rose has something to tell me about her encounter 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


291 


with him, I am sure, but it may take years of matri¬ 
mony to worm it out of her. She’s close-mouthed 
too, bless her. And you might have turned out to be 
Sam of Little Lodge. I think she would have liked 
that.” 

“You’re happy?” his companion asked, abruptly. 

“Yes.” 

There was a silence. The lights of Tom’s house 
showed in the distance. Bob slowed down for a min¬ 
ute and half turned. 

“I—we owe it all to you, somehow. If you hadn’t 
sent me up there on the pretext that you wanted 
her work overlooked and herself courteously taken 
care of-” 

“I don’t claim to be a wizard,” Jabez told him, 
“and I don’t want to be. I am content with the wiz¬ 
ardry of things as they are, but the minute I had her 
little letter in answer to mine, the minute I saw her 
in that great marble barn of a station, with her 
eager eyes and her dear, amusing little face, I knew, 
Bob. I know you .” 

“Matchmaker!” 

“Dear me, no. I never play with fire. I didn’t 
dream of such a thing. Am I an old woman or a 
bride or a schoolgirl whose first thought hurdles all 
the obstacles and lands in the net of matrimony? 
No, I didn’t even hope it. I just thought, ‘There’s a 
human being who will be good for one Bob Carter.’ 
I didn’t even think of her in terms of sex. I just 



292 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


felt that anything as honest, as sunny, as trans¬ 
parent and—well —giving as that girl was what you 
needed, and I was right. You know I don’t pry, 
Bob. It has not been my habit, but am I not right 
in believing that much of the old hurt is gone, even 
the wound to your pride, that you have found, at 
last, the ultimate happiness beside which that other 
was as starshine to sunlight?” 

“Yes. And it was Mary Rose who showed me, up 
there at Little Lodge before I loved her—or per¬ 
haps I loved her then, who knows? I wonder,” he 
added, “if Claire is happy? I hope so. I’d give a 
lot to know.” 

“Boy, but you’ve traveled far!” said Jabez Jones. 

Their hands met for a moment and then Bob 
stepped resolutely on the accelerator and in a few 
minutes they were driving up to Tom’s hospitable 
door and stopping. 

Bob took Jabez’s bag and jumped out. 

“Wait a minute till I see if the coast is clear,” 
he hissed in rather piratical accents, and went up the 
steps several at a time. 

“Mary Rose!” 

“Here!” 

She switched on a light over the porch. Jabez, 
from his dark corner in the car, could see her and 
drew a deep breath. The other glimpse had been 
nothing to this. On tiptoe, body, soul and mind, 
that girl, with her face upturned to Bob’s, her gay 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


293 


Red Riding Hood cape flung over a sheer white 
frock, her little feet impatient on the floor. 

“Where is he? You tell me this minute! Oh, 
Bob, don’t dare say he didn’t come!” 

“Chit! Be still! Kiss me! He came. Is the 
rest of the party out of eye and earshot?” 

“All over at Five Chimneys for supper. We are 
to join them. Where is he?” 

“In the car—too paralyzed with terror to get out.” 

She broke from him and ran to the steps crying, 
“Jabez Jones! Dearjabez! Please!” 

Jabez untangled long legs and alighted. He came 
up the steps and stood on one somewhat below her, 
watching her face. The light was full on his. 

“Here I am, little Mary Rose.” 

She stood quite still. But this was Bob! Think¬ 
ing herself a little mad, she made the most helpless 
gesture in the world and turned distractedly to find 
her lover beside her. She looked from one man to 
the other. The same height, the same build, fea¬ 
ture for feature the same, only the lines in the 
older face were lines of long experience, lines of 
laughter and tenderness, and the thick hair was 
grey at the temples and at the crest of crisp waves. 
But he was Bob, just the same—Bob a little older, 
a little wiser, a little more tolerant. 

She put out her hands to him. 

“You are—you are-” 

He caught them in his. “Robert Carter, very 


294 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


much at your service. Father to that undeservedly 
lucky young scoundrel there.” 

“Father!” and bending from her little advantage 
of height, she kissed him, very sweetly. 

Then into Tom’s deserted living room they went 
to look and look and exclaim, with the tears running 
down Mary Rose’s cheeks and her eyes happy, 
happy. 

“Somehow I always knew it was you—all along— 
the nicer you!” she said to Bob. 

“Well, I like that!” 

Presently Jabez had to go to his room and remove 
a portion of Long Island soil from his person and 
Bob and Mary Rose waited for him down stairs. 

“Isn’t he a marvel?” Bob was saying, happily. 
“Father and mother to me, that’s what he’s been. 
My mother died when I was quite a kid. That’s 
when he built Little Lodge, you know. About that 
time he started this Jabez Jones business. It was 
the old Biblical idea of not letting your right hand 
know, etc. He thought of the scheme over night 
and started it in a small way. Just trying to help 
people, with encouragement, with money, with—oh, 
with just bits of his heart. Little by little it grew to 
amazing proportions. He has any number of Jabez 
Jones accounts in the banks, you know. He has 
his own letterheads, as you have seen, and one con¬ 
fidential secretary who attends to things, writes let¬ 
ters at his dictation and looks people up for him. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


295 


It is his hobby. He loves it. He loves it better than 
anything in the world, I think—even better than the 
big business he has built up for himself.” 

“Why, he’s that Robert Carter!” said Mary Rose 
in amazement. “I’ve seen pictures of him. That’s 
why you looked familiar, I suppose, but I never con¬ 
nected the two of you, somehow.” 

She thought with a little awe of “that” Robert 
Carter, the man whose very name was synonymous 
with steel, and turned on Bob with reproach. 

“You- Why haven’t you gone into business 

with him? It must have hurt him to build all that 
up and then have you—a slacker!” 

“I suppose I deserve that,” he told her humbly. 
“But see, dear, I had intended to go into the busi¬ 
ness, in overalls to start, just the way they do in 
the magazines, after college and then came the war 
—and then—things went to pieces. But I’m ready 
now. Shall you like filling my lunch pail and start¬ 
ing out in a little shack in the wilds of Pennsylvania 
somewhere? For Jabez, darn him, isn’t going to 
fling me into a general managership all at once.” 

“I shall love it!” 

He hugged her close to him. 

“You—blessing! But it won’t be as bad as that. 
I have my mother’s money, you know, and, Mary 
Rose, we’ll keep up the camp. I’ll get a very good 
man I know of to take it over and we’ll spend our 
vacations up there. You’ll love that best of all. The 



296 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


kids are wonderful. I had such a happy summer— 
or would have had if you’d been there.” 

And here was Jabez, walking toward them with 
Bob’s own elastic step. “Here, you two, I haven’t 
come down here just to witness close-ups.” 

They jumped up and had hold of him each by a 
hand and, linked in that pleasant fashion, went out 
to the car and drove to Five Chimneys. Here Mary 
Rose thrilled absurdly to hear Bob say, in that new, 
vibrant voice which was suddenly his: 

“Everybody—my father!” 

That night when the two house-parties had sepa¬ 
rated and Five Chimneys had gone to bed, when 
Miranda was singing her nonsensical kittens, now 
very obstreperous indeed, to a necessary slumber, 
Mary Rose knelt down by the low window in her 
room and put her arms on the sill, looking out into 
the night. She said nothing, not even to herself; 
she did not pray, not even in her heart; but every 
inch of her little body, every fiber and pulse and 
nerve in her was singing together a song of praise 
and of gratitude. She had always loved the world, 
she had always looked for magical things, and the 
world and the magic in the world had justified her 
belief. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


I don’t think any amateur Baedeker trying to col¬ 
lect material for a travel book would acquire much 
practical detailed knowledge of Porto Rico from 
Mary Rose’s letters home. Her impressions grass- 
hoppered all over the pages and certainly, as Dean 
said, “While they made for vividness they did not 
seem to possess any amount of clarity or coherence,” 
which was unfair to Mary Rose, a born and avid 
“ready letter writer.” Her letters to Bob were much 
colored by love but strove at the same time to give 
him honestly her reactions to the tropics. 

She wrote him a little every day aboard ship. 
Extracts of the bulky epistle which finally reached 
him, he would read aloud to his father and chuckle 
over them. Other parts he kept very much to him¬ 
self and read and reread in the solitude of his rooms 
in his father’s great and mellow old house on lower 
Fifth Avenue. 

“First day out. 

Darling, I’ve been all over the ship, snooped and 
swooped into all the corners and it’s a duck of a ship, 
which strikes me as a very appropriate simile. I’ve 
such a very swanky room and bath, all to myself. 
The cabin—I suppose I must call it that—is white 
with dark panelings and a bewildering multiplicity 
297 


298 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


of beds, two real ones and one folded-up affair, like 
a large envelope. There are blue brocade curtains 
at real windows—two of them—a built-in wardrobe, 
a dresser and bench and all sorts of fancy knick- 
knacks such as electric fans and thermos bottles and 
brocade spreads. As for the bathroom, it’s tiled and 
glassed and shining and has a shower over the tub 
and about a million handles that read ‘hot’ and 
‘cold’ and ‘salt’ and ‘fresh’ and lend a sort of Alice- 
in-Wonderland air to it. The rest of the ship is nice, 
too. Lots of wicker lounging rooms and a smoking 
room with a soda fountain in it, all done up in 
leather—not the soda fountain, you understand! 
Naturally there are decks. Naturally one of those 
salon things with tapestry furniture and phono¬ 
graphs and young things darting in and out, and 
also a large dining room which makes you hungry 
just to look at it. My steward is a very romantic¬ 
looking creature only he doesn’t seem to speak much 
English, which is a drawback. There is a steward¬ 
ess, too, only I hope I never have to see her. 

Mrs. Mercer is so dear to me. He is, too—but 
there is something about her which draws me ever 
so much. I can’t explain it. She doesn’t say much, 
but I feel that she is happy that I’m here and that 
it was right for me to come. I am happy, too, as 
happy as I can be away from you. I keep telling 
myself it’s just for a little time. The next separation 
won’t be a real one for we shall be seeing each other 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


299 


often—and then, no more partings, ever. I love you 
so much, so much. Every day more than the day 
before. If it goes on, what shall I do? There isn’t 
enough of me to hold it all. I must grow, perhaps, 
in wisdom and stature and spirit to be able to con¬ 
tain anything as precious. 

Later. 

It’s something more than a mill pond, darling, but 
not what you might call rough. Mrs. Mercer is a 
good sailor but would you believe it, that great 
big man has succumbed and now lies groaning, I 
suppose, in his own particular brocaded suite! And 
lots of other people have fled below—the nice ones, 
I mean. The un-nice ones do not go below; they 
stay on deck and are a real trial to the healthy rest 
of us. There is a Porto Rican on board, a slim 
thing with a bright blue shirt—I’ve only seen him 
in one shirt so far—and wet black hair and a pale 
face with a loose, pink mouth, who is systematically 
ill everywhere I am. He always manages to be near 
me. I have a feeling if this keeps on I shall commit 
murder. I shall push him overboard; I know it. 
Shall you mind very much? I am really terrified 
that such lethal impulses are possible to me. But 
there is a bishop aboard. I never saw one close to 
before. This one is a dear, awfully good to look 
at, with one of those voices that takes you by the 
heart. I have met him in the easy camaraderie of 


300 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


shipboard and he is as attractive as he looks. He 
and Mrs. Mercer are a lot together. I think he 
guesses a little what an unhappy life she has had. 
He has seeing eyes, you know—they look right down 
deep. In a measure he mitigates the Porto Rican 
—who still mal-de-merishly pursues me. I shall 
never forget him or his blue shirt. 

There are Britishers aboard—titles. He wears 
brown ‘braces’ that are at least a foot wide, removes 
his coat to play poker in the evening and has a large, 
benevolent, purple face. She looks like the Red 
Queen in Alice—just such a figure. She walks a lot. 
Her face is exactly like a winter apple. In the 
evening she dresses for dinner by turning in the 
collar of her blouse and pinning an Irish-lace collar 
around it with a cameo and wears, in addition, a 
large string of amber beads. She has little bright 
eyes and a small, tight mouth and the consciousness 
of her race and birth. There is a young man with 
them, large and handsome. He is a secretary or 
something and people whisper that he is a ‘giddy 
Dook,’ as Stalky would say, or something, in dis¬ 
guise. If so, he disguises the strawberry leaves with 
a celluloid collar. They keep very much to them¬ 
selves. 

For the rest, some pretty girls, a number of sugar 
planters, lots of natives and a party of angular, 
anxious-eyed school teachers. Mr. Mercer swears 
he will not take the round trip. He will leave the 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


301 


boat at San Juan and travel by motor. He says 
he doubts very much if he will ever return to the 
States at all unless some one will show him a way 
to walk there! Mrs. Mercer assures me that he has 
crossed ever so many oceans before and always acts 
like this. I do not think for a moment that we shall 
take the sixteen-day boat trip. I am rather glad. 
It sounds touristish, doesn’t it? I fancy I shall like 
the motor trip part of it. Only—it will mean a 
longer time away from you. Perhaps it will do you 
good—I have spoiled you fearfully—but that would 
be cutting off my nose to spite my face, wouldn’t it? 
All day long I sit in my deck chair and watch the 
blue water slide past and think of you, and am con¬ 
tent in knowing you think of me. I love to have 
your little wireless messages. And how the operator 
shines his face up to just the right expression of 
curious sympathy when he gives them to me. He is 
a red-headed brat with engaging ways.” 

Landing at San Juan, Mary Rose, Mrs. Mercer 
and the exhausted, but still vocal, Mr. Mercer de¬ 
parted at once for the very beautiful hotel which 
stands in gardens a little way from the city and 
has the dreaming ocean on one side and the lagoon 
on the other; a hotel of cool, tiled patios, fountains, 
glass dining rooms and thousands of caged birds 
singing their hearts out above the cool chintzes of 
the wicker furniture. Mary Rose was more im¬ 
pressed, one gathers from her letters, by the mos- 


302 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


quito net over her bed in the pretty little room 
assigned her than by anything else. She wrote to 
Magda that it “looks like the wedding veil of a 
giantess and drapes with a really charming and even 
chic effect.” She was to learn, however, that that 
snowy, suspended, tucked-in netting was not placed 
just where it was for decorative purposes only. 

There followed several days of exploration around 
the city. Mary Rose wrote home to Bob: 

“I just couldn't live here very long, Bob dearest, 
so never ask me to make my home in the tropics. 
Of course I am sketching like mad and hope for 
a chance to paint but the color does hurt one’s eyes 
—the color of sea and palms and white, dazzling 
beaches and these great, gaudy, scentless flowers. 
My eyes and mind ache with it all by bedtime. The 
oddest thing in the world is the multiplicity of small, 
brown, naked babies who parade the streets without 
fear and without reproach and, one may add, without 
shame. They have huge fat tummies, which are much 
bigger than the rest of them. Mrs. Mercer says it is 
under-nourishment—or did she say over? I am not 
quite sure. We’ve seen all the really lovely villas 
and even dined at one. The Mercers have friends 
all over the world, and there were delightful Ameri¬ 
cans, rather lackadaisical and malariaish, but still 
delightful. And we’ve been all over the shopping 
section by car and on foot. It’s better on foot, the 
streets are as narrow as the way to heaven. I must 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


303 


confess that it was very wise indeed of Dads to 
make me a present of jingling coins before I left 
for I have spent all my own allotment on such mat¬ 
ters as trousseau things. The handwork is really 
too lovely, but that won’t interest you! What 
would (or have you been here? You didn’t tell me, 
we seemed to have other things to talk about) 
interest you is the open-faced houses. They are 
all sorts of queer colors and quite open to the 
public. One looks in at so many cross-sections of 
family life—quite intriguing and informal but a little 
embarrassing, I should think, although the inmates 
do not seem to feel it so.” 

When San Juan palled they took the motor trip, 
an all-day affair, over the breath-taking and mag¬ 
nificent Military Road to Ponce. Mary Rose be¬ 
came, on that journey, a fatalist. First she suspected 
that she would be killed and fought the idea in her 
mind; then she decided it didn’t make any dif¬ 
ference how she felt about it as she would certainly 
be killed anyway, and so relaxed in the comfortable 
seat and pretended not to be nervous. Mr. Mercer 
was plainly so, but Mrs. Mercer, watching every¬ 
thing from shining eyes, never “turned a hair,” as 
Mary Rose afterwards admiringly accused her. The 
ride itself, with a stop to eat their basket luncheon, 
was a marvel of hairpin curves, one after the other, 
of swallow-dips and soarings, of level spaces and 
high places. Mary Rose afterwards could remem- 


304 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


ber nothing of it—that is, nothing in sequence. She 
wrote to Bob that her mind felt like nothing so 
much as a book of free verse. “Tobacco fields— 
ferns and water just growing out of sheer rock— 
trees—flowers—oxcarts met and only just avoided 
around the curves—clouds so near you could touch 
them with your hand—ocean, blue and green and 
altogether wonderful — little, perilously perched 
houses—and beauty, beauty, beauty—almost a sur¬ 
feit of it.” 

She found Ponce rather flat and dull after San 
Juan. The two days spent with pleasant boat 
acquaintances in a house on stilts in the surroundings 
of a sugar plantation were much more thrilling than 
any city. She found a little time there to paint, and 
paint she did—palms and long white roads and an 
oxcart with the driver perched on high, a red flower 
behind his ears, and a small boy sitting between the 
horns of the scar-sided, patient animals—and the 
lovely reaches of the cane. After that stop-off they 
passed on to the factory settlement where, after a 
mountain drive of some thirty miles, Mary Rose 
saw sugar in the making, and spent two more days 
in the busy settlement that faced an arm of water 
and was backed by high, oppressive hills. From 
there to Mayagiiez, that flat town razed by the 
earthquake and tidal wave of 1918, and then a trip 
into the “interior” and finally back for another last 
week at San Juan. 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


305 


She complained to Bob that they saw so much and 
did so much that they couldn’t seem to find time for 
any real conversation beyond “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” and 
“Did you see that?” and “Oh, look over there!” 
But in San Juan, with a lazy, non-sight-seeing week 
ahead of them, she came very close to Elizabeth 
Mercer. 

It was curious to see that little woman expand and 
flower under the hot semi-tropical sun. She seemed 
to be warming herself with it all the time, as if 
for years she had been frozen. She basked, as the 
very lizards did, and sat for hours in a great peacock 
wicker chair in the garden court of the hotel with her 
eyes looking out to sea. She told Mary Rose, “I 
love the heat, I always have. It relaxes one so. 
I don’t think or even consciously feel when I am 
in the sun.” 

At night when Mr. Mercer had gone off to be 
with some of the shipboard cronies, Mary Rose and 
her hostess would sit out-of-doors until the ubiqui¬ 
tous mosquito drove them in. They would talk in 
a fragmentary but revealing fashion. Once Mrs. 
Mercer said: 

“When you’re married, Mary Rose, never hide 
anything from your husband—not the little secret 
griefs or the big sorrows that may come to you. 
It may seem kinder but it isn’t—not in the long 
run. It shuts you out from each other. That’s 
what I have been doing all these years, shutting my- 


306 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


self out from warmth and sunlight. It’s like living 
in a neglected garden where the sun never comes, 
where there are damp places and weeds and over¬ 
growth and a silent fountain.” 

And Mary Rose answered gently, “It’s never too 
late, is it, to let the sunlight in and tear down 
the walls again?” 

“I don’t know,” she said. 

But to Mary Rose, watching her with pity and 
affection, it seemed as if she were making the effort. 
Little things were like arrows pointing to this: the 
way she tried to walk close to him on their little 
jaunts; the way she sometimes touched his hand and 
smiled with a certain wistful appeal; the way she 
always wanted him with her and showed it. Mary 
Rose, her own long love-journey so soon to begin, 
was humbled and a little awed watching these two 
who had come so far along the road together and 
yet apart, and were now trying to find once more 
the old, steady-paced step of understanding. And 
he was so pitifully happy for every little demon¬ 
stration ! 

A very slight but uncomfortable attack of malaria 
laid the big man low shortly before their sailing, 
postponed now for another week. Mrs. Mercer was 
with him all the time, anxious and intent, and Mary 
Rose, left much to herself, walked and painted and 
bathed in the ocean and wrote to Bob and answered 
his frantic are-you-never-coming-home cables. She 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


307 


had a fancy that it would be a real home-coming, not 
only for herself, but for the dear people with whom 
she had traveled. 

And then, suddenly, as it seemed, they were step¬ 
ping from gold and green sunshine, from blazing 
blue skies and lazy hours in the warmth, into a 
real New England snowstorm, one which greeted 
them not far from Sandy Hook and which hailed 
them again on the Brooklyn docks. Bob was there, 
in the early, blinding morning, to see Mary Rose 
safely home, and the Mercers left at once for Daven- 
dale. 

Before they docked, however, or rather while the 
slow process of docking went on, Mrs. Mercer said, 
hurriedly, taking advantage of the fact that her 
husband had gone to see to the luggage, “ Before 
we leave you, I want to thank you, Mary Rose, 
for coming. Please don’t say anything. I know it 
was a sacrifice, but we did want you so much. First, 
because in a way it has helped us for many years 
to have another person with us; then, just for your¬ 
self. You have been of such comfort to me; you’ll 
never know.” 

Mary Rose protested, shyly. “But I haven’t 
done anything except take your kindness and love it 
and be grateful for it.” 

“No. You haven’t done anything—just been. 
You’re the most livable person I ever knew, and like 
the sunshine—heart warming. If Betty had lived,” 


308 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


and for the first time she said it without that deadly 
bitterness, “I would wish she were just like you. 
I want you to know that Hal and I, while he was 
ill there-” 

She stopped, words were so difficult here, and 
then went on, the black eyes smoldering no longer 
but clear and shining as if the good healing tears 
had washed away that devastating fire and left them 
burning with the flame of quiet stars. 

“It’s all right now. I’ve told him all the things 
that hurt—that I let fester—and we’re going to 
begin again—at our age. I want him to take up 
business again—in a different way, perhaps, per¬ 
haps as silent partner in a concern he knows of. He 
has missed it so. And we’ll give up the little farm, 
and live in New York again. When we travel it will 
be for pleasure and not for forgetfulness. Why, 
Mary Rose, after all, we’re quite young people yet, 
Hal and I, and there’s so much ahead.” 

She paused again and then went on abruptly, 
“We’re going to adopt a daughter. He has always 
wanted me to. It was one of the things I couldn’t 
understand in him and that hurt me so dreadfully. 
I thought—oh, it seemed so terrible, as if he thought 
any one could take her place. But that wasn’t his 
thought, I know it now. Perhaps I can make up to 
him a little and to life if, through me, some child 
finds a mother and love and care and all the pretty 
things we are able to give her.” 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


309 


There was much back of the halting words. Mary 
Rose held her hand tight as they leaned there to¬ 
gether at the rail and watched the ant-like activities 
of the people. Youth in the house of Mercer once 
again, and laughter and small seeking hands binding 
these two estranged people together once more! 

Then came the landing and Bob—his arms around 
her in full view of everyone—and soon, a morning 
of rest, a perfect luncheon and a happy hour till 
train time with Bob and Father Jabez in the old, 
pleasant house. 

“I love to go away from you,” said Mary Rose to 
Bob, “because there’s nothing quite as wonderful 
as coming home again.” 

She pulled his possessive arm a little tighter about 
her small waist and, smiling quite brazenly at the 
watchful Jabez who sat with them in a mellow, 
book-lined library, said, patting the encircling arm, 
“Home. Here ” 


CHAPTER XXV 


Even with Mary Rose away, Five Chimneys had 
not been without its excitement and emotions as she 
learned soon, almost as she set foot on the snow- 
covered soil, for Tom and Magda, in one breath, 
exclaimed: 

“We didn’t cable-” 

“We didn’t write-” 

“You might have worried-” 


“But, oh, Mary Rose, aren’t you glad?” 

It took her some time to get the story straight in 
her mind. A number of historians had to supply the 
details. Mother, Father, small, important Warren 
himself, and of course Magda and Tom. Eventu¬ 
ally the thing was clear to her and, as she told them, 
she was “much, oh, much gladder than just glad.” 

The story was in reality quite simple and capable 
of being reduced to a very few words. In the main 
it was as follows. Warren, strictly forbidden to ven¬ 
ture out on the ice, had disobeyed. Skating was 
denied him, poor little fellow. Shortly after Mary 
Rose’s departure, the inlet which washed the 
Osborne shores froze beautifully solid, and he spent 
hours on the bank watching the more fortunate small 
boys busy after school at their skating and sliding, 
watching, too, the oilskinned fishermen spearing eels 
310 



MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


311 


through the black holes in the shining expanse. It 
seemed that he dreamed of it by night, this smooth, 
frozen water, gold in the sun, silver under the stars. 
He had never lived near water and had grown to 
have a passion for it during the previous summer. 
It seemed friendly and tender to him, a thing of little 
lapping waves and soft caresses. It never occurred 
to him there could be treachery at its heart. 

So, on a Saturday at Tom’s—all his free time was 
spent at Tom’s—he slipped away from him and went 
down to the beach. There were only a few small 
boys on the ice and these took little or no notice of 
him. His adventurous feet itched for the feel of it 
under them. He pulled his resolute little chin deeper 
into the high collar of the red Christmas sweater 
and frowned, his blue eyes intent under drawn, child¬ 
ish brows. He couldn’t skate—ever. He admitted 
that, with his curious stolid philosophy, but he could 
surely walk a little on that wonderful glass surface! 

He ventured to the edge and, with the sense of 
wrongdoing upon him but not very heavily, one fears, 
went out a step—and promptly saw stars. This 
enraged him; he was a child who went at obstacles 
tooth and nail and loved a fight better than a baked 
apple, a fight with things that must be conquered or 
would destroy. Fear of the dark, a walk a little too 
long, terror of being lost, all these things he had 
won victories over and more beside. A mere sheet 
of smiling ice could not conquer him. 


312 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


He went out further, often falling, always getting 
up, dogged and persistent. He found a way, as 
he quaintly said, “to fix his feet” so that they slid 
obediently and not from under him with that appall¬ 
ing bump and suddenness. He was so intent on 
his limping, slipping, rather delightful progress that 
the biggest eel hole loomed black before him and 
he did not see it. It was the scream of the other 
children a good way off that brought Tom, already in 
search of the child, to a very swift and thorough 
rescue. There was no question of Warren’s drowning 
—that is, as long as Tom had been within earshot. 

But if he hadn’t been-! That was the thought 

that made them all shudder. If he hadn’t been-! 

The other children were not close by, and were 
small and terrified into the bargain. 

Fished out, as Tom put it, and hurried to the 
house, Warren was stripped and put into blankets 
and the doctor and Magda sent for. It looked for 
a day as if he would be quite all right, just a little 
languid and feverish from the shock, for he was, 
for all his life-giving summer, a delicate child. Worst 
of all, his disobedience really weighed on his small 
mind. They did not attempt to move him and 
Magda stayed with him for that night. By morning 
he would be well. But he was not. By morning 
he was hoarse and uneasy, by noon fighting for his 
little breath and delirious. 

Mrs. Rogers came over to relieve Magda, but it 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


313 


was really Tom who nursed him, who held him in 
his arms and gave the medicines, who kept the 
covers over him and who, by sheer force of will, 
Magda said, fought off the bronchial pneumonia that 
threatened. 

There was one very bad hour. Mrs. Rogers had 
gone downstairs for a moment and the doctor was 
sleeping in the next room. The room in which the 
boy lay was lighted with one little, steady lamp, 
and Tom’s shadow on the wall looked gigantic. He 
sat on one side of the single bed, Magda on the 
other. She was quite calm, and very pale, only 
her eyes burned in her white face. He put his 
hand out to her, over the restless little shape of 
the child, and she laid hers in it. 

“He’ll pull through,” he told her. 

She looked at him, half unseeing. 

“Magda, say it after me.” 

She repeated the words, once lifelessly, and again 
with a sort of startled hope giving them color. At 
intervals all that night he said it to her as if it had 
been a formula, a magic spell, an enchantment. 

When it was certain that he would pull through 
and he slept quietly with the dreadful fever broken, 
and when the doctor had gone his way for a time 
and Mrs. Ro’gers had gone home to see to her house, 
Tom, who had not had his clothes off his back for 
three nights, rose from his cramped position and 
took the tired woman who had watched with him in 


314 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


his arms and let her cry her heart out on his shoul¬ 
der. When the sobs had ceased to shake her, he 
pushed her head back and smoothed the tumbled, 
wheat-colored hair from her forehead with a clumsy, 
tender hand. 

“I swear to you, Magda,” he told her, “I don’t 
know which of you I love more—or if it’s you in 
Warren or Warren in you!” 

And that was his proposal! 

Later, of course, when Magda had come to her 
senses and Warren, convalescent and very fretful, 
had his entire grocery store on a table beside him 
and was charging his patient nurses all manner of 
exorbitant prices, Magda protested wildly. 

“But I can’t! The tea room! All that money 
invested in it and only just begun!” 

Said young Mr. Osborne: 

“Don’t be a silly person. You have that flat- 
footed helper of yours beautifully trained. She 
can run it all right and I’ve no objection to your 
overseeing it. As to that, the thing to do will be to 
sell it at a profit for all concerned, as soon as it 
gets to the place where selling is possible. Do you 
think for a minute that a toy tea room is going to 
rob me of my wife and son?” 

He hardly knew himself in relation to this woman 
whom he loved. It had been so different with Mary 
Rose. She had been like a quick flame playing all 
about him; he could never catch her and hold her; 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


315 


she had made him feel dull and inferior and heavy, 
she was so swift and so sure, burning straight to 
her goal. He had loved her, partly from propin¬ 
quity, partly from a habit of loving and much be¬ 
cause she was, herself, so very lovable. But he 
had never been himself with her, always putting 
himself in the worst light, sullen and angry because 
it was so, seemingly disapproving when he was only 
hurt because he could not follow. But Magda— 
first the friendship, and then the affection that 
bound them through the child; and now this slow 
growth of a steady passion. She was everything he 
needed—the fit, the right, the one mate. Serene and 
deep bosomed as the soil he loved, gracious and 
warm and goddess-tender. They could move together 
through life, eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder. 
She understood him. She loved the things he loved. 
She loved the earth and the fruits thereof, she was 
rest and comfort to him, with her steady, warm hand 
in his. He thought with a great, overwhelming 
gratitude of what their life together would be, work¬ 
ing and playing, with this son of her beautiful body 
and of his own heart beside them and with, he 
hoped, other children to laugh and romp through 
the big old house. It was strange to him to think 
things out; he was never a person for words and 
analyzing himself. But there was one thing he knew 
surely, if dimly, and this he tried to tell Magda. 

He knew this: that if there were other children 


316 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


he woifld adore them, but Warren must come first 
—crippled Warren, because he needed him so and 
because no blood tie bound them. That seemed 
very strange but it was so. There was no obligation 
there. There was just love. When he tried to tell 
Magda, she put her arms about him and held him 
almost as if he had been Warren himself. 

“You never said anything to me as beautiful as 
that / 5 she told him. 

And to this Mary Rose came home, and, for this, 
was “gladder than glad . 55 

“But, of course , 55 said she, serenely, “I knew it 
all along. It was only a question of time—and my 
little Warren to play a wet and bedraggled Cupid . 55 

When John Dean was told he shook his head at 
Mary Rose, who undertook to break the news to him 
on a trip to town. 

“Magda, too? All you girls! 5 Tain 5 t fair. I shall 
have to get married in self-defense , 55 he said gloomily, 
“with everyone deserting me like this ! 55 

Mary Rose only smiled. She fancied that with 
John it was “only a question of time , 55 also. 

She herself was married from Five Chimneys in 
the spring. In the beautiful and unlucky month of 
May. 

“Unlucky ? 55 she scoffed when reminded of this 
by anxious neighbors. “Unlucky—with all the blos¬ 
soms out and the birds singing! Unlucky—to be 
married to Bob ! 55 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


317 


Everyone came and was housed anywhere: the 
Mercers and their new, blonde, slender daughter 
whose years were four and whose name was Mary 
Rose; the Amos Brents, back from Europe; Dean 
and Mr. Mann, “the cause of it all, when one goes 
back, really”; Jabez, with contented eyes and 
pockets bulging with checks; Miss Sally, home espe¬ 
cially for the event, and all the others. Magda 
and Lou Perkins were bridesmaids, a very contrasted 
couple, and the little Mercer baby and Warren, at¬ 
tendants of the most engaging type possible. And 
there were cousins of Bob’s and Mary Rose’s own 
two aunts and all of the Osborne clan, most of Well- 
port and half, it seemed, of Long Island. It was 
an orchard wedding under the apple trees laden 
down with blossoms—and a bishop married them! 
The very bishop of the boat, with whom Mary Rose 
and the Mercers had kept in touch. 

It was a very wonderful little wedding, curiously 
informal and different. Mary Rose moved through 
her part of the ceremony as a sleep-walker moves, 
widb-eyed, with a flame of color on each cheek and 
a great armful of white lilacs and apple blossoms. 
Bob, very grave and very pale, held her hand in 
his all through the short, beautiful ceremony, held 
it as if he would never let it go again. 

She couldn’t think. She knew the sun shone and 
the bishop’s voice was like music and that there were 
violins somewhere among the trees and that falling 


318 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


petals were caught in her soft veil. She knew Bob 
was beside her and that she had only to look up to 
meet the contented eyes of Jabez, the adoring ones 
of her father and mother. She knew that all was 
well with her friends, with the Brents and with the 
dear Mercers, with Magda and Tom, who were to 
be married at harvest time—so fitting a season it 
seemed somehow—she knew these things and even 
vaguely reflected on them and gave thanks. But 
her real self seemed not in her body or in her mind. 
Her real self was one with the bird singing his heart 
out on a bending branch, one with the blossoms, 
one with the blue sky and the sunlight. She was not 
Mary Rose any more, not an individual; she was 
but part of the earth and of heaven. Her love was 
as a great tree, rooted in the good soil, aspiring 
upward, fruitful, growing, growing. And then sud- 
denly, the ring was on her finger and the words of 
blessing and Bob's kiss on her lips and the circle 
of friendly arms that closed about her and would not 
let her go. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


But see her once more and remember her there, 
at Little Lodge, given to her for the honeymoon and 
forever after. The deed was among her many 
wedding presents. See her once more, with Red 
to greet her as if no time had elapsed since their 
parting, and with Sam and Nancy at the door to wel¬ 
come Mrs. Bob home. And see her, for the clear 
night was a little chilly in that high place, before the 
fire at Bob’s feet, her head against his knees and her 
hand held in his. 

“It makes it perfect,” she told him, “to come here 
—if more were needed for perfection.” 

He touched the dark curls and said, unnecessarily, 
“Happy?” 

“Must I say it?” 

“You must!” 

She said it on her knees to him, in a most sub¬ 
missive manner, reaching her warm lips to his as 
he stooped his tall head and then drew her up into 
his lap. 

“Everyone’s happy,” she said, dreamily, “all of 
them. Oh, Bob, people are so dear. To have the 
friends we have—it’s just blessing on blessing.” 

She stretched out her arms, a little wildly, and the 
firelight made ruddy flames in her hair and played 
over her small, flushed face. 

319 


320 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


“Such a beautiful world and we’re just at the 
beginning.” 

He drew her down again and kissed her closely 
and long with a grave, hard passion. 

“Y ou —darling ! ” 

She touched his cheek with the rosy palm of her 
hand. 

“Just to make you happy,” she said, “that’s all 
I want. And just to love you and to serve you. 
But not to grow selfish with it, not to shut myself 
away from the world and people and hug my happi¬ 
ness to my heart. Isn’t it the East Indians who are 
so afraid to show their happiness lest the jealous 
gods step in and destroy them? I’m not; I want 
to show it. There are no jealous gods save those 
we make ourselves and they’re only of mortal clay. 
I want to show my happiness to everyone but I want 
to share it. The world needs happy people, dearest; 
it needs me and it needs you and we mustn’t deny 
ourselves to it.” 

He said, caressingly, “Little altruist. Little girl- 
baby Hercules trying to sweep out this stable of a 
world with the broom of sunshine. Don’t get too 
enamored of the world, Mary Rose—-I’m here and 
need you more than all the rest of the world put 
together.” 

“Yes. You’re here and need me. That’s what 
makes it so beautiful. But let me sweep, Bob, where 
I can. It’s—it’s the only way I have of trying to 


MAGIC AND MARY ROSE 


321 


repay the world and Him who made it something 
of my great debt.” 

He kissed her again and the fire flickered and 
died down. 

There were high winds in the pine trees and the 
scent of earth and water and trees. Nancy and Sam 
had long since gone to bed. The old dog slept on 
the hearthrug and now and then barked in his 
sleep or twitched his ears. He was dreaming of 
old hunts, old plays, old times in the woods and 
valleys. 

And the two who watched there in the fire were 
very quiet, looking a little toward the past but much 
toward the future, seeing in the embers those secret 
pictures to be shared with one other only. And 
each in his own way giving thanks for what he 
saw. 

And so one leaves them at Little Lodge. And 
because this is a true tale, which is always a fairy 
tale, because in the tale there is magic and at the 
heart of the magic there is Mary Rose, we know 
the ending. It is an ending more common, thank 
God, than we busy people realize nowadays—an end¬ 
ing that is a beginning, and that, in the words 
children have loved and listened to since the first 
fairy tale was told in a cave, reads thus: 

And so they were married and lived happily 
forever after . 


THE END 





















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